PART- II
BIRDS ARE BRAINY !
BIRDS ARE BRAINY !
Which is the world's smartest bird?
Most scientists say that it's the common raven. One sign of ravens' brain power is their adaptability. That means that they can change their behavior to solve new problems.
Today it has been discovered that the crow has complex social reasoning skills and ability to craft ingenious tools.Crows have been known to steal fish from fishermen by using their beaks and feet to pull up the lines when the men were not looking.
Some birds have been observed using twigs to probe for grubs they could not reach. They may even use a bit of invention by bending or shaping the twig for this purpose.
Even more fascinating are some types of birds that seem to use bait for fishing. In this instance they will drop an insect in the water and wait for a fish to surface.
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Some birds such as jays will wedge a nut into forked branches to make it easier to crack. American crows have been observed dropping rocks or holding them in their beaks while they pound on nuts to open them.
Crows in Japan have an interesting way of cracking nuts. They will wait at a traffic light. When the traffic stops they will run out an place a nut in front of a car tire. When the traffic stops again they will retrieve their cracked nut.
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African Honeyguides are small birds named for their habit of leading people to bee hives. The birds will call and fly backwards to get the people to follow them. After the people open the hive and retrieve the honey the birds feed on the left over honey and larvae.
Crows have already been hailed as the Einsteins of the avian world have even more impressive bird brains than thought, displaying a type of intelligence crucial to human evolution.
The cerebral cortex is the main area of intelligence for most animals. Birds have a relatively small cortex. In the 1960s neurologist Stanley Cobb discovered that birds use a part of the brain, which mammals do not have, as their main area of intelligence. This is the hyperstriatum, and is at the front of a bird’s brain. It was found that the larger this part of the brain was the better birds did on tests to measure intelligence.
Darwin pointed out,
"There should be some characteristics of human intelligence shared between humans and their ancestors, and between animals that have experienced the same selection pressures.
"Corvids (crows) and apes both evolved around 5-10 million years ago during a period of great climatic and environmental variability and instability. We hope we have identified a stream of thought that runs in humans, apes and tool-using crows."
We shouldn't ask how smart birds are, but we can indeed wonder how bird intelligence works !
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