Crows, smarter than you think | John Marzluff | TEDxRainier

I want to talk to you today about

crows

for the most part and how they use their amazing brains to solve problems in the world. I will do so by introducing the general group of these animals, the corvids, which are called

crows

. Crows, magpies and jays, and I'm going to illustrate some of the wonderful things they do with some anecdotes. I'm going to start with a little bit of brain biology for you just to warm you up a little bit and then I'm going to To show you some of the research that we've been doing with colleagues of mine at the University of Washington and my goal really is to show you that the derogatory term brain of bird is really poorly used and I hope to convince you to use it.

As a compliment from now on, I first want to start with a very short video clip and in this clip you will see a new callonia crow, not the species that we have here in the United States, but one that lives on islands where there are no woodpeckers and of course there are woodpeckers, there is so much food available under the bark and in the soil that an animal that would be smart enough to use something like a long tongue that a woodpecker has could exploit and the way the new calonia Crow does this to create tools from leaf stems and sticks to skewer some of these insects that hide under these hidden places, so what you're going to see is a film from Oxford colleagues showing a new calonia Crow trying to solve the problem of getting a small basket of food out of a clear tube and all Betty the crow has given you here is a straight piece of wire, not the kind of thing you're used to finding in your home, uh, country again calonia so let's watch and see what she does first she just grabs the cord and starts using it and waits for the friction to help her and she pulls this basket out of the tube she's probing and pushing like she's going to use a stick to get a bug It comes out of the bark but it doesn't work very well, friction doesn't help it in this case, so now

think

about what you would do, how would you solve this problem?

How many of you would have thought of this? His little children wouldn't have thought. from this solution to this problem, but the crow made it from that innovation, she can get food by simply making the tool itself, it's not that surprising to me, that's what this animal does in its native habitat, they regularly make tools and use them to get food, but What surprises me in this video is that she really seems to have a plan. She seems to be using knowledge to solve this problem. She has steps resolved in her head. I'll try this, if that doesn't work, move on to the next. set of sequences that use or within Insight to understand the nature of a problem and Sol.

It's not something we used to

think

animals actually did, certainly not birds, so how do they do it? What allows you to do this kind of thing well first? off uh it's a function of your brain size, especially relative to your body size and that's what this graph shows on the Y AIS uh you see the brain size of a variety of animals and on the x axis the body size and there are some lines there that represent general relationships between the size of the animal and its brain and large animals have a large brain, they have a larger surface area to control and larger organ systems to deal with, so that there's an overall positive relationship there and you also see The lines represent the different groups of vertebrates that we're used to seeing.

Bottom fish have relatively small brains. Birds, then mammals and primates like us have the largest brains for our bodies, but there is a lot of spread around these points. lines that I should say and in particular I've shown you some for birds and you might look first at the ostrich, a very large bird with a very small head and think Oh, that's probably not the most intelligent bird on the planet. others that have large brains for their body size and those are shown in the other points and those are mostly corvids. I meant the jays and the crows, the new calonia crows there, uh, right here, the American crow is even a little bit.

With a larger brain than the new Calonia crow, these birds are well above the average relationship with birds, they are above the relationship with mammals, and they are very close to the main relationship, so I like to think of these animals like small flying monkeys instead of flying birds. now they have two other things going for them besides a big brain for their body, they also have a long lifespan, they live, not uncommonly, 20 or 30 years in the wild and during that time they can accumulate individual knowledge. knowledge from their own experiences and the third thing they have in their favor is that they are social, so they can also accumulate knowledge by observing other individuals and instead of having to make a mistake to learn, they can observe others make mistakes or innovations and learn. of those too, so those three things long life sociality and a relatively large brain help these animals to do these kinds of things, their brains are also complex, much more complex than we thought a few decades ago, so I'm going to go into a a little bit about the biology of a bird's brain so you can put into perspective how your brain and that of something like a crow are similar in many different ways.

The first thing you'll notice here is that they have a very large forebrain. While we do, the gray area in this illustration shows that the brain is large and not everything is uniform. There are many different areas that do different things, but mainly what that brain does is evaluate the information that comes through the sensory organs. The eyes, the ears, the tactile receptors found in a bird's beak, all of that information enters the forebrain and is evaluated and considered, interwoven, and, most importantly, informed by two other places in the brain. brain that birds have and so do you.

It's the hippocampus, how many of you used your hippocampus this morning? Your sensory organs can be informed with that spatial relevance of where you are. The other part of the brain that a bird has is the amygdala and the amygdala is the part of the brain that brings emotions and feelings to places. in what you are or in the sensory information that you are bringing in, so together, think about it this way, you are bringing in all this information, you are informing it about where you are and maybe what happened to you there before and how it felt like you are creating emotional memories spatially. relevant you do it in your brain and birds do it too here is a mascot image of a bird's brain a crow in this case actively involved in observing people in this particular case and what you see here There are different shades of brightness, yellows bright in the area of ​​the brain and that only indicates differential activity when the bird is engaged in a task, the brighter, the busier that part of the brain is, not everything is uniform, that is the first thing to notice, there is some glow. dots there, the first two, the really top circles, big, those are the bird's eyes and I want you to realize how big a bird's eyes are, you only see the little exit pupils when you look at a bird, but behind the skin is a huge eye, it's an incredible visual sensor that the bird uses to evaluate its world, it sends the information to each hemisphere from its eyes, uh, in the brain, and there are two hemispheres like yours, one right and another left, and you can see two bright spots in those hemispheres.

Those are the early visual processing centers, like your visual cortex, where you take in the view, consider it, and work on it. Birds do that too, but they can do it in a cool way that we can't. they can only work on half at a time their brains are not as connected the two hemispheres are not as connected as ours and from that point of view they can actually sleep one half of their brain while considering things with the other Pretty nice half trick . I wish I could do it myself, but I notice that the general part of the brain is not illuminated evenly, but rather different places operate differently on the information, the visual information, in this case, that the bird is bringing and they can make one .

Another thing that we do, and some reptiles probably too, we're not so sure about amphibians, but they can reconsider the information they bring and they can even do it while they sleep and dream about the information, so think about this. you're taking in the day's information you're thinking right now man, i gotta get out of here this guy is talking about bird brains and i'm so tired of this stuff i want something more exciting could you send that consideration up your spinal cord to your muscles and act on it accordingly and leave through the back door.

I appreciate you not doing that now, but the reason you can do that is that instead of sending that command to your muscles, you can send it. Go back to your old brain and reconsider it, shape it, think about it, change it, maybe say: I'll give it another slide or two and then I'll be here if it keeps up like this. Birds can do the same. They can take information. and without simply reacting by informing it with their memories and sending it to their muscles to do something, they can restimulate the part of the brain that was initially stimulated by that information and they can change the way they consider it, change the muscular system. action they would put in place to behave in response to it by looping between their forebrain, their thalamus, and back to their forebrain.

A cool trick, it's very important to us, it's one that these animals can do too and like I said, they can even do this while they're sleeping and dreaming and we know that birds dream because if you look at the songbird's brain, which is where big part of our knowledge about how a bird's brain works, the parts that are stimulated while they are singing can also be stimulated while they sleep, so they are actually thinking about their songs while they are sleeping well. It's not so surprising that we share much of the brain's basic architecture, the basic neurochemicals that stimulate our brains in the same way as our neurons. they work together and really even how we report our information with memory and emotion with other animals, we shared a common ancestor 350 million years ago, we had a common amphibian ancestor and those ancestors along the reptilian line are listed at the bottom This graph and above are some of the modern representatives of these lines of vertebrates, so think about this: the first amphibians that gave rise to modern amphibians, such as frogs, endowed that animal with a particular type of brain;

It was modified a little in the reptiles that later gave rise to it. Mammals arose relatively early in our Evolution and reptiles continued to evolve giving rise to Modern reptiles which again have those same basic brain characteristics and finally to the Pinnacle of evolution, as we have shown here, the dinosaurs which eventually led to birds, so there is Not so, it's not a big reason to be surprised that we have some similarities in how we use information and how we feel about it. So is it possible that birds really have fun when they do things? I want to tell you some anecdotes now that I suggest you really have fun and other things too.

Consider these crows flying in Rocky Mountain National Park on large currents of wind flying on their fabulous wings. They could do anything, barrel rolls, almost anything you can imagine that bird could do. action so why in this case are they using surfboards, have picked up pieces of bark and are riding the wind like a surfer would when they have fabulous wings that could do it just as well, why would they do something like that maybe? They're showing off maybe they're thinking they can open it and get some food out. I doubt it. I think what they are doing in this case because it is a relaxed environment.

It's at night before going to sleep. They're just playing, they're having fun, they're getting a rush of endorphins in their brain from the same neurochemicals that you would get pleasure in your brain, uh, while they're doing this activity, it doesn't mean that the game isn't useful, it certainly is. very useful for us, in this case it may simply be developing new neural circuits in the brain that allow them to make new connections and discover new ways of using objects in their environment. They also take risks. Here's a crow again on I5. and a speeding car next to my neighbor was driving and he screamed as they drove over it, uh, poor Raven, they turned to look expecting to see dead B, but they didn't.

He had crouched down like that, the car hitting him just above Raven. appeared after the car passed and continued to eat the rabbit, so they take calculated risks, understand their environment and use it to their advantage, in this case to have a kind of exclusive use of this particular food and, in particular, The next car that came did the same, the bird did the same.bend over they take other risks some with wild animals dangerous predators others with potentially dangerous chemicals in their environment in uh India Domestic crows have been observed picking up cigarettes others that have If crows had had cigarettes stolen from their pockets, their fascination with this kind of thing is really known all over the world, also in Juno, Alaska.

Crows like to drink coffee or at least collect crows. They make cups of coffee and now taste them again. Because? Would they do this kind of thing? Maybe they are suffering from a chemical fever in their brain. I somewhat doubt it, in this case I think this is a manifestation of their general nature of trying everything in their environment. These birds are very innovative, they pick things up, especially maybe if they have seen us pick them up and they try. Sometimes it produces food, sometimes it produces a dangerous response and they learn from these kinds of things.

They quickly associate good and bad. How about the language? They have very complex calls that they use. In fact, they are the largest songbirds. In the world a crow is not thought of as a songbird, they do not sing a pretty song, but they have a complex vocabulary that refers to things in their environment in arbitrary ways that conveys individual knowledge about these particular elements in their environment and they use this in their own way to communicate among their lifelong companions and solve the problems they face. They can also speak English, English, Russian, French and German, and they actually edit these spoken words to as well. convey quite interesting things.

I'm going to play you a very short audio clip of a woman's pet Crow, and she trained this crow to say certain things. First you will hear the Raven say his name Edgar and, second, you will hear him say something. about Edgar Allen Po's famous use of his species uh so just listen carefully and get an idea of ​​how this crow can talk what's your name? what is Raven supposed to say to make this crow speak very clearly, he talks very much like his owner and even has an attitude when he speaks, you can hear it in his voice, so Kevin Smith was woken up one morning in Missoula Montana by his dog barking in the backyard.

The vampire was going crazy and Kevin was wondering why the dog was so upset that he goes to the backyard to confront his dog and the person who is calling his dog here boy come on boy come on here boy come on why is this guy playing with my dog? Kevin thinks and goes to the kennel and from behind the kennel a crow appears and says here boy, come on boy, come on. here boy come on Kevin was a little surprised but that was nothing because this Raven spent the next two weeks in Missoula rounding up dogs from the neighborhood, taking them to the college campus and keeping them in the Bay as shown here in a tree calling them here. boy let's go and all the dogs are hey where do we go until class would finally get out and the students would cross and the crow would leave and the dogs would chase the crow, maybe taking out a sandwich or a bag of chips or maybe just eating? a good time so again this crow used something he learned from his keeper at some point it was obviously a pet crow but he put it in his own world he used it for his own particular use in the same way the magpies in Sweden really impressed a woman who She was feeding One winter she would throw pieces of food at them and the magieses would come and pick up the food and she liked that she enjoyed having them around, she noticed that when she passed by the window they followed her and she thought. that was very nice she gave him a little more food and then she noticed that they started pecking at the window when she passed she thought it was very nice she gave him a little more food until finally the doorbell rang and she went out to open the door and there was no one there, it took him a while until he finally caught the magpies in the ACT ringing the bell as shown here, pressing the tongue of this lion ringing the bell, that was great, gave him more food and he reconditioned himself and these birds conditioned her, she conditioned them to To be in this little game, they clearly recognize her because they didn't like her husband that much, he told me that in fact he didn't like magpies and he actually acted like I had thrown something at them a time. and from that day on they shit on the windshield of your car every morning only on the driver's side and if you changed places with your wife's car they still only got yours so be careful these birds are smart and they told us they know and it is important that they know it. us because they live in a place where they have to face people of different values, some who like them and some who don't, so we did some experiments on this and our suggestion was that we could catch birds and which is something they don't particularly like. and in this case we decided that instead of just going out like we normally do and trying to keep them calm when we catch them, we would wear these crazy masks, so we wore a caveman mask when we caught the birds and Our idea was that then we could try to birds to see if they would recognize this caveman as he walked around the campus where we caught the birds, and in fact, we could compare their response to this mask to another very similar mask where we never did anything dangerous. to the bird with which we had a dict chany control mask and a dangerous mass, the caveman and lo and behold, the birds responded quite strongly and they could tell the difference in this graph, the first panel shows the response before for us to do any prior capture tests. there was no response, basically the birds didn't really care about us, it's not unusual to have strange looking people walking around our campus after we did the experiment, we caught seven birds again, the two control faces without a mask or Dick Cheney no provoked a response, but the caveman provoked a strong response in any way backwards with a hatless hat, they really caught this guy and scolded him, dived and chased this person every time he walked around campus and that continues today.

This graph shows the change over eight years. As the response to the caveman basically doubled over the course of this 8-year period, almost all of the birds involved in the caveman scolding were never touched or hurt by the caveman, or all of them. They learned this by watching each other scold each other. Many of the birds scolded today weren't even born when the caveman first caught birds seven and a half years ago, so where in the brain could this type of behavior be located? We've done some brain scans again with PET images on these birds so we can see what parts activate when they look and see the person who caught them, which is what you see in the first panel of M there versus looking and seeing a person who has been taking care of them and feeding them for the last few weeks and there is a very very strong difference when they look and see the person who caught them, their amidala is active exactly as yours would be if you saw a danger that you learned about in your environment, the right hemisphere of his amydala, in the second panel, there you see the answer. to the loving face and there the brain's reward circuit is activated.

They are anticipating like Pavlov's dog and perhaps feeding on this person. They have made this association very quickly, but what about compassion? Can these birds have compassion? They often gather around their dead as this illustration shows and we thought they might be gathering there to learn about dangers or opportunities or perhaps mourn the loss of a long-time companion, so we tried to simulate this in the lab as well and did it. That we showed our Birds was a new person. They had never seen a new mask held by this particular dead crow, in this case, how would they react to that in their brain?

You might expect the amydala to activate if they had an emotional response like we showed in the top panel when they looked out and saw the person who caught them, but that's not the case, bottom panel when they look out and see the person who caught them. a person holding a dead crow, it is the hippocampus that is active, they are learning about this danger, they are accumulating this knowledge of a danger. person or place and apparently storing it in their hippocampus. Well let me finish by suggesting that these birds are very successful in our environment because they have learned to live with us, they consider us very carefully, they recognize us, they take this information and act accordingly often because of their success they challenge us we are afraid of their diseases We are bothered by their noise or perhaps challenged by the fact that they also eat other animals.

I would just ask that we take that information and consider it as carefully as birds consider us to think about what we have done to the environment that could have put them on this path and how we could solve it without taking out the gun first, which is our typical reaction towards these animals and getting rid of them with that I would appreciate your attention