Bird IQ (1 Viewer)

[Touty]

From the Torygraph. I post the entire article 'cos the site requires registration:

Hunt for intelligence finds quail are birds of very little brain
By Nic Fleming
(Filed: 22/02/2005)

Some of our feathered friends are more bird-brained than others, according to scientists.

New World quail are the avian dunces, propping up emus, ostriches and nightjars at the foot of the intellectual pecking order.

However, crows, rooks, jays and ravens - collectively known as corvids - top the world's first bird IQ index, and fellow swots include falcons, hawks, woodpeckers and herons.

The ranking is based on analysis of innovative behaviour reported in ornithological journals over the past 70 years.

Prof Louis Lefebvre, an animal behaviourist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, told the association that his findings confirmed a positive correlation between brain size and intelligence in birds, and attempted to be diplomatic in announcing the bad news for quail.

"You can live quite well if you have a small brain. You are not innovative, your metabolic rate is low and you develop fast. It means there are some animals at the top of the line and some animals at the bottom."

Prof Lefebvre began collating reports of wild bird innovation to investigate the relationship between brain size and intelligence in 1994. By trawling through journals such as British Birds and the Wilson Bulletin in the US, he collected some 2,000 reports of unusual behaviour in 500 species.

"In western Europe there were around 900 cases, of which four or five were about partridges, whereas for crows they totalled up to close to 100. We look at the relative numbers for all bird types and compare the different kinds, taking into account confounding factors."

Allowing for relative body weight, a crow's brain is on average about five times larger than that of a pigeon.

One report described how Japanese carrion crows on a university campus were seen perching at road junctions waiting for traffic lights to turn red.

When vehicles came to a halt, the crows flew down to place walnuts under the tyres so they could return moments later with the nuts having been cracked open.

Andre Farrar, of the RSPB, said: "Some birds are very adaptive. Crows and magpies will probably survive no matter what we throw at them, whereas other species are much more tied to stable environments."

 

[Brian Stone]

The Jap crows are particularly ingenious, but then they are university educated by the sound of it. I heard a radio article on this story and they mention Vultures that sit around minefields waiting for large animals to blow themselves up. That sounded more opportunistic than clever and certainly the one or two vultures that got themselves blown up weren't too smart.

Quail may not be the cleverest but they manage to outwit most birders' attempts to see them!

 

[Rhion]

Prof Lefebvre began collating reports of wild bird innovation to investigate the relationship between brain size and intelligence in 1994. By trawling through journals such as British Birds and the Wilson Bulletin in the US, he collected some 2,000 reports of unusual behaviour in 500 species.

The problem here is that Crows are so much easier to see than Quail that there would inevitably be more innovative behaviour observed in Crows. The times I've seen Quail have usually been in flight and for a few seconds, which doesn't give a lot of scope for observing anything. Of course that may have been taken into account.

 

[Nutcracker]

Quail may not be the cleverest but they manage to outwit most birders' attempts to see them!

The problem here is that Crows are so much easier to see than Quail that there would inevitably be more innovative behaviour observed in Crows

The article referred to New World Quail (Odontophoridae), which are often very easy to see and study - I saw loads of California Quail and Mountain Quail on a trip over that way.

And I'd agree they're pretty gormless critters, barely much more sense than captive-bred-and-released pheasants (which I'd rate bottom of the ladder!)

Good to see Nutcrackers coming out in the top group

 

[Touty]

The article referred to New World Quail (Odontophoridae), which are often very easy to see and study - I saw loads of California Quail and Mountain Quail on a trip over that way.

And I'd agree they're pretty gormless critters, barely much more sense than captive-bred-and-released pheasants (which I'd rate bottom of the ladder!)

Good to see Nutcrackers coming out in the top group

Agreed on the overall thickness of released galliforms. I have to say 'my' partridges are as dim as they come, but a lot seems to depend on very early experience. Spring-released captive-bred partridges, released at 8 or 9 months of age are completely clueless and die off in a week or 10 days whereas young partridges (60 days old) seem to rapidly explore, assimilate and make use of their new environment. It (obviously) helps when they are adopted by wild partridges. The window of behavioural plasticity closes rapidly (at c. 120 days). Guess you can't teach an old dog (or human, or partridge for that matter) new tricks.

 

[Nightranger]

Ian Peters at the RSPB says (LOL) all birds are opportunistic and there are some great examples of adaptive behaviour such as the robin catching minnows (BBC Wildlife) and magpies learning to open milk bottles. In both cases, the birds watched other species at work and this gives an interesting insight to one aspect of behaviour and how it is derived. It perhaps should not come as much of a surprise that most foraging and feeding behaviour is learned and is not truly instinctive. Raptor juveniles often die soon after the parents cease feeding them because they have not learned the skills of hunting sufficiently well. Anyone watching even a 2nd winter juvenile sparrowhawk willl know what I mean and it is a wonder they catch anything at all sometimes. However, the common thread in all this is that many of the birds that indulge in interesting or unusual behaviour are at least partial predators (blue tits predate caterpillars, for instance). Does this infer that seed eaters have no capacity to show learning? Probably not, it is just that finches are likely to be a lot more subtle when ti comes to adopting knew patterns of behaviour being at the business end of the food chain and all that. I have certainly seen occasions when finches are not just showing aggression towards each other but could only be playing albeit that this never lasts long for obvious reasons.

Ian

 

[Nutcracker]

Interesting points, but actually . . .

(blue tits predate caterpillars, for instance)

Caterpillars predate Blue Tits by about 300 million years

:brains:

 

[Nutcracker]

And on the general point (semantics apart!) - Ostriches, Emus, and many/most gamebirds are omnivorous, preying on lizards, rodents, large insects, etc, etc, as well as vegetable food.

I've seen a Pheasant kill and eat a mouse.

 

[Nightranger]

Interesting points, but actually . . .

Caterpillars predate Blue Tits by about 300 million years

:brains:

Where is the pulls tongue out smiley (LOL)? I should go and edit my post now to read "blue tits eat caterpillars". Seriously though is predate a genuine word with a dual meaning or have I been inadvertently adding to the greater confusion that is the English language?

Ian

 

[Nutcracker]

Hi Ian,

You'll not find 'predate' in a dictionary as other than 'to be at an earlier date'; the correct term is 'prey on'. But true that the other sense of 'predate' is getting rather frequent in recent years, so I suppose it will appear in future dictionaries

 

[Nightranger]

And on the general point (semantics apart!) - Ostriches, Emus, and many/most gamebirds are omnivorous, preying on lizards, rodents, large insects, etc, etc, as well as vegetable food.

I've seen a Pheasant kill and eat a mouse.

True enough, but the point I was trying to make was that I am not entirely sure that IQ means much in birds (arguably, predators are more intelligent by our standards but this is only a general rule given what seems to be a tremendous capability shown by elephants). After working with the captive herd at Chester, the animals clearly do not have all the problems of life in the wild (no discussion about the ethics of captive animals here please) so they have time and capacity to display fresh and unusual patterns of behaviour. Extending this back to birds, would suggest that pheasants do not show much capacity because (for the most part) they do not have to. As you may have gathered, I am not a great fan of this kind of anthropomorphic attitude except if it is clear that it is just a fun exercise. (Quick note: I do not mind anthropomorphising a la William Oddie because it can illustrate a point, providing it is realised that birds do not have these thought propcesses in reality.)

Ian

 

[Nightranger]

Hi Ian,

You'll not find 'predate' in a dictionary as other than 'to be at an earlier date'; the correct term is 'prey on'. But true that the other sense of 'predate' is getting rather frequent in recent years, so I suppose it will appear in future dictionaries

Thanks Peter,

I have to admit that it is not something I decided on so I can claim an excuse having picked it up from elsewhere (Ian Peters does not have that many original ideas it seems ). I just never gave it a thought that the word might not have a dual meaning after all until you mentioned it. Whoops!

Ian

 

[Dimitris]

However, crows, rooks, jays and ravens - collectively known as corvids - top the world's first bird IQ index, and fellow swots include falcons, hawks, woodpeckers and herons.

QUOTE]

Where would one place Parrots then?They are certainly highly intelligent.

Oh and I think that Sparrows and Weaver Birds are perhaps the most intelligent of the finches.However,this may be because they tend to live closer to man or because they are more oporunistic when it comes to food.

 

[Nutcracker]

Where would one place Parrots then?They are certainly highly intelligent.

Oh and I think that Sparrows and Weaver Birds are perhaps the most intelligent of the finches.However,this may be because they tend to live closer to man or because they are more oporunistic when it comes to food.

Hi Dimitris,

Parrots didn't come out as high as was expected, above average, but not much, not in the top group at all.

Dunno where sparrows fit in, but they definitely aren't the "most intelligent of the finches" as they aren't finches, they're sparrows, different family :brains:

 

[Touty]

However, crows, rooks, jays and ravens - collectively known as corvids - top the world's first bird IQ index, and fellow swots include falcons, hawks, woodpeckers and herons.

QUOTE]

Where would one place Parrots then?They are certainly highly intelligent.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4286965.stm

Crows and jays are the brain boxes of the bird world, according to a Canadian scientist who has invented a method of measuring avian IQ.

The IQ scale is based on the number of novel feeding behaviours shown by birds in the wild.

The test's creator Dr Louis Lefebvre was surprised that parrots were not high in the pecking order - despite their relatively large brains.

The research was presented at a major science conference in Washington DC.

Feeding innovations

The avian intelligence index is based on 2,000 reports of feeding "innovations" observed in the wild and published in ornithology journals over a period of 75 years.


People tend not to like crows, because they have this fiendish look to them and they're black and they like dead prey
Dr Louis Lefebvre
"We gathered as many examples as we could from the short notes of ornithology journals about the feeding behaviours that people had never seen or were unusual," said Dr Lefebvre, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

"From that we established different numbers for different birds. There are differences. There are some kinds of birds that score higher than others.

"The crows, the jays, that kind of bird - the corvidae - are the tops; then the falcons are second, the hawks the herons and the woodpecker rank quite high."

Dr Lefebvre said that many of the novel feeding behaviours he included in the work were mundane, but every once in a while, birds could be spectacularly inventive about obtaining their food.

During the war of liberation in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, a soldier and avid bird watcher observed vultures sitting on barbwire fences next to mine fields waiting for gazelles and other herbivores to wander in and get blown to smithereens.

"It gave them a meal that was already ground up," said Dr Lefebvre.

"The observer mentioned that once in a while a vulture was caught at its own game and got blown up on a mine."

Milk thief

Another bird watcher observed a great skua in the Antarctic who joined in with seal pups feeding on the milk from their mother.

Many of the birds that ranked high on the innovation scale are the least popular with the public.

"When you look at published reports on whether people like birds or don't like birds, they don't correlate well with intelligence," said the McGill researcher.

"People tend not to like crows, because they have this fiendish look to them and they're black and they like dead prey. Warblers and the birds that people tend to like are not the high innovators."

But Dr Lefebvre said the scale did not measure how smart birds were, only how "innovative".

"With the word 'smart' you have to have a value judgment. You can never know whether a bird has been learning by observation or has figured something out by itself."

The work was presented to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).