Phase 1 - Friday June 30, 2023
I chose to try and talk about crows this morning as I thought it would be a more in person presentation so I hope this is acceptable.
There have always been many
In 2011 an infamous study was published about the American crow’s ability to remember human faces, attack those who had treated them poorly, and spread the information to other crows in the vicinity as well as juveniles. They remembered for years.
A study on an island off New Zealand of the New Caldedonian crow found the passing of tool usage and abstract problem solving to juveniles so marked that it inspired a mathematical model for solving large data sets. “The New Caledonian crow learning algorithm (NCCLA), [was] inspired by efficient social, asocial, and reinforcement mechanisms that NC-crows use to learn behaviors for developing tools from Pandanus trees to obtain food.” (New Caledonian crow learning algorithm: A new metaheuristic algorithm for solving continuous optimization problems).
I think it is fascinating that we end up studying these animals that recognize us and present to us patterns that seem so recognizable in return. Intelligence about so many things it is important to think about how that is defined and seeing in animals how key cumulative learning is to development is a fantastic leap in talking about it. Because as much as we can observe the result of the behavior we still don’t know how they communicate about individuals faces, or how the brain stores this information. It is an ever evolving study to learn the things we take for granted as being special to us may be being developed by other things around us. How does the conversation about intelligence change if the combination of memory, problem solving, and generational learning all are traits other animals possess?