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'm going to do that by introducing the overall group of these animals the corvids they're called the crows Ravens Magpies and Jays and I'm going to illustrate some of the amazing 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 bit and then I'm going to show you some of the research 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 of a bird brain is really misused and I hope to convince you to use that as a compliment from now on so first off I want to start with a very short video clip and in this clip you're going to see a new caledonia crow not the species we have here in the United States the one that lives on islands where there are no woodpeckers and because there's no woodpeckers there's a lot of food available underneath the bark and in the soil that an animal that would be clever enough to use something like a long tongue that a woodpecker has could exploit in the way the New Caledonia crow does this is to fashion tools out of stems of leaves and sticks to skewer some of these bugs that hide under these hidden places so what you're going to see is a film from colleagues at Oxford that show a New Caledonia crow trying to solve a problem of getting a small basket of food out of a clear tube and all Betty the crow is given here is a straight piece of wire not the sort of thing she's used to finding in her home country of New Caledonia so let's watch and see what she does first off she just grabs the wire and starts to use it and hoping that friction will help her and pull this basket up out of the tube she's probing and pushing like she might use a stick to get a get an insect out of the bark but it's not working very well friction is not helping her 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 your small children wouldn't have thought of this solution to this problem but the crow did from that innovation she's able to get food just making the tool itself is not all that amazing to me that's what this animal does in their native habitat they regularly make tools and use them to procure food but what surprises me in this video is it really she seems I have a plan she seems to be using insight to solve this problem she has steps figured out in her head I'll try this if that doesn't work I go to the next set of sequences using insight or into it to understand the nature of a problem and solve it it's not something we use to think of animals as really doing certainly not birds so how do they do this what allows them to do this sort of thing well first off it's a function of their brain size especially relative to their body size and that's what this graph shows on the y-axis 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 big animals have big brains they've got a bigger surface area to control and bigger organ systems to deal with so there's a general positive relationship there and you see also the lines represent the different groups of vertebrates that were used to seeing fish on the bottom have relatively small brains than birds than mammals and primates like ourselves have the biggest brains for our bodies but there's a lot of scatter around these points around these general lines I should say and in particular I've shown you some there for the birds and you might look first off at the ostrich a very large bird with a very small head and think that's not probably the smartest bird on the planet there are others that have large brains for their body size and those are shown in the other dots and those are mostly the corvids I refer to the Jays and crows and ravens the New Caledonia crows on their right here the American crow is even a little bit larger brained than the New Caledonia crow these birds are well above the average bird relationship there above the mammal relationship and there right close to the primate relationship so I like to think of these animals really as small flying monkeys rather than flying birds now they've got two other things going for them in addition to a big brain for their body they've also got a long life span they lived not uncommonly 20 or 30 years in the wild and during that time they can accumulate knowledge individual knowledge by their own experiences and the third thing they are going for them is that they're social so they can also accumulate knowledge from watching other individuals and instead of having to make a mistake to learn they can watch others make mistakes or innovations and learn from those as well so those three things long life sociality and a relatively large brain help these animals do these sorts of things their brains are also complex much more complex than we thought just a few decades ago so I'm going to go into a little bit of the biology of the brain and a bird for you just to put into perspective how your brain and the brain of something like a crow is similar in many different ways first thing you'll notice here is that they have a very large forebrain just as we do the gray area on this illustration shows that large forebrain and it's not all uniform material there are a lot of different areas there that do different things but mostly what that for brain does is assess the information that's coming in through the sensory organs the eyes the ears the touch receptors that are in the bill of a bird all that information feeds into the forebrain and it's assessed and considered it's woven together and importantly it's informed by two other places in the brain which birds have and you do - the first is the hippocampus how many of you used our hippocampus this morning most of you to get here for sure that's your really onboard GPS it's your spatial memory reservoir and also other sorts of memories are held in the in the hippocampus information that you bring in from your sensory organs can be can be informed with that spatial relevance of where you are the other part of the brain that a bird has and you have is the amygdala and the amygdala is a part of the brain that brings in emotions and feelings to places that you're at or to sensory information you're bringing in so together think of it this way you're bringing in all this information you're informing it with where you are and maybe what happened to you there before and how you felt about it you're making spatially relevant emotional memories you do it in your brain and birds do it as well here's a pet image of a bird's brain a crow in this case actively engaged in observing people in this particular instance and what you see here are different shades of brightness bright yellows in the brain area and that just indicates differential activity as the birds engaged in a task the brighter the more engaged that part of the brain is it's not all uniform that's the first thing to note there are some bright spots in there the first to the really upper big circles those are the eyes of the bird and I want you to realize how big the eyes of a bird are you only see the little exit pupils as you look at a bird but behind the skin is a huge eye it's a it's an incredible visual sensor that the bird uses to assess its world it sends the information to each hemisphere from its eyes in the brain and there are two hemispheres just like yours a right and a left and you can see two bright spots in those hemispheres those are the first visual processing centers like your visual cortex where you take insight and consider it and work upon it birds do that too but they can do it in a very cool way that we can't they can work on just half of it at a time their brains aren't as connected the two hemispheres aren't as connected as ours and from that standpoint they're able to actually sleep one out for their brain while they consider things with the other half pretty pretty nice trick I wish I could do myself but notice that the part of the overall brain is not uniformly lit but different places are operating differentially on the information the visual information in this case that the birds bringing in and they can do one other thing that we do and some reptiles probably do as well we're not so sure about amphibians but they can reconsider the information they bring in and they can even do it while they're sleeping and dreaming about the information so think about this you're taking in the information here today you're thinking right now man I got to get out of here this guy is talking about bird brains and I'm really tired of this stuff I want something more exciting you could send that consideration down your spinal cord to your muscles and act on it and walk out the back door and I thank you for not doing that right now but the reason you can do that is that you can instead of sending that command down to your muscles you can send it back to your forebrain and reconsider it shape it think about it change it maybe say I'll give them another slide or two and then I'm out here if he keeps going on like this birds can do the same thing they can take information in and without just simply reacting to it informing it with their memories and sending it down to their muscles to do something they can relate the part of the brain that was initially stimulated by that information and they can change how they're considering it change the muscle or action that they would put into place to behave in response to it by looping it between their forebrain their thalamus and back to their forebrain pretty cool trick it's very important for us it's one that these animals can do as well and as 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 songbirds brain which is where a lot of our knowledge about how the brain of a bird works the parts that are stimulated while they're singing can also be stimulated while they're sleeping so actually they're thinking about their songs as they sleep well it's not so surprising really that we share a lot of basic architecture of the brain the basic neuro chemicals that stimulate our brain the way our neurons work together and really even how we inform our information with memory and emotion with other animals we share a common ancestor 350 some million years ago we had a common amphibian ancestor and those ancestors up through the reptile line are listed on the bottom of this graph and up at the top are some of the modern representatives of these vertebrate lines so think about this the early amphibian that gave rise to modern amphibians like frogs endowed that animal with a particular sort of brain it was modified a bit in the reptiles that then gave rise to mammals relatively early in our evolution and that reptiles continued to evolve give rise to modern reptiles again having those same basic brain characteristics and then finally to the pinnacle of evolution as we've shown here the dinosaurs which eventually led to the birds so there's not so not a big reason to be surprised that we have some similarities and how we use information and and feel about it so is it possible then that birds could actually have fun when they do things want to go into some anecdotes for you now that suggests they indeed do have fun and and other things as well consider these Ravens soaring in Rocky Mountain National Park on great updrafts of wind soaring with their fabulous wings they could do anything barrel rolls cartwheels just about anything you can imagine that bird can put into action so why in this case are they using surfboards they've picked up pieces of bark and they're riding the wind like a surfer might when they've got fabulous wings that could do just as well why would they do something like that maybe they're showing off maybe they're thinking they can crack it open and get some food out of it I doubt it I think what they're doing in this case because it's a relaxed setting it's in the evening before they go to roost they're simply playing they're having fun they're getting it endorphin rush in their brain from the same neuro chemicals that you would get pleasure from in your brain while they're doing this activity it's not to say that play isn't useful it's certainly very useful for us in this case may simply be working out new neural circuits in the brain allowing them to make new connections and and suss out new ways to use objects in their environment they also take risks here's a raven again on i-5 and a car speeding along my neighbor was driving and he screamed as they drove over this poor of raven they turned around to look expecting to see the dead burbot it wasn't it had just ducked down like this the cars zapped right over it raven popped up after the car went over continued eating the jackrabbit so they take calculated risks they understand their environment and they use it to their advantage in this case to have kind of exclusive use of this particular food item and in particular the next car that came by did the same thing the bird did the same thing duck down went over it they take other risks some with wild animals dangerous predators others with potentially dangerous chemicals in their environment in India House crows have been observed picking up cigarettes others who've had pet crows have had cigarettes stolen from their pockets there fascination for these sorts of things is is really world renowned also in Juneau Alaska Ravens they're like to drink coffee or at least pick up Ravens brew coffee cups and try them out now again why would they do these sorts of things maybe they're getting a chemical rush in their brain I kind of doubted in this case I think this is a manifestation of their general nature to try everything in their environment these birds are very innovative they pick up things especially maybe if they've seen us pick them up and they try them out sometimes it produces foods sometimes it produces a dangerous response and they learn from these sorts of things they quickly associate good and bad how about language they've got very complex calls that they use they are in fact the largest songbirds in the world you don't think of a crow as being a songbird they don't 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 items in their environment and they use this to their own in their own ways to communicate among their lifelong mates and solve problems that they deal with they can also speak English and Russian and French and German actually and they use these spoken words to also convey pretty interesting things I'm going to play you a very short audio clip of a woman's pet raven and she trained this raven to say certain things you'll hear first the raven give his name edgar in second you'll hear him say something about Edgar Allen Poe's famous use of his species so just listen carefully and get a feel for how this raven can talk what's your name so this raven speaks very clearly speaks much like his owner and even has an attitude when he speaks you can hear it in his voice so kevin smith was awakened one morning in Missoula Montana by his dog barking in the backyard vampire was going nuts and Kevin was wondering why the dog was so upset he goes into the backyard to confront his dog and the person who's calling his dog here boy come on boy let's go here boy let's go why is this guy messing with my dog Kevin thinks and he goes to the kalyan up from behind the kennel pops a crow saying here boy come on boy let's go here boy let's go Kevin was a little shocked but that was nothing because this crow spent the next two weeks around Missoula rounding up dogs from the neighborhood bringing them to the University campus and holding them at bay as shown here in a tree calling to them here boy let's go and the dogs are all here where do we go until finally class would get out and students would cross and the crow would take off and the dogs would chase the crow maybe dislodging a sandwich or a bag of chips or maybe just having a good time so again this crow used something that it learned from its keeper at some point it was obviously a pet crow but it put it into its own world use it for its own particular use likewise Magpies in Sweden really impressed a woman who was feeding them one winter she would toss out little bits of food and the Magpies would come in and gather the food and she liked that she enjoyed having them around she noticed as she go by the window they'd follow her and she thought that was a neat game a little more food and then she noticed they started to peck at the window when she came by she thought that was really neat game a little more food until finally the doorbell rang and she went out to answer the door and there was nobody there took her a while till she finally caught the Magpies in the act ringing the doorbell as shown here depressing the tongue of this lion door bell ringer now that was great she gave more food in recondition these birds conditioned her she conditioned them to to be in this little bit of a game they clearly recognized her because they didn't like her husband so much he told me in fact he didn't like the Magpies around any actually acted as if he threw something at them one time and from that day on they crapped on his car windshield every morning only on the drivers side and if he switched places with his wife's car they still only got his so be careful these birds are smart and they know us and it's important for them to know us because they live in a place where they have to confront people of different values some that like them and some that don't so we did some experiments on this and what our suggestion was is that we could catch birds and which is something they don't particularly like and in this case we decided rather than just go out as we normally do and try to keep them calm when we catch them we'd wear these crazy Mass so we were a caveman mask when we caught the birds and our idea was we could then test the birds later to see if they would recognize this caveman as he walked around campus where we caught the birds and in fact we could compare their response to this mask versus another very similar mask that we never did anything dangerous to the bird with so we had a control mask Dick Cheney and a dangerous mask the caveman and lo and behold the birds responded quite strongly and could tell the difference in this graph the first panel there shows the response before we did any captures pre-testing no response basically the birds didn't guarantee care about us it's not uncommon to have weird-looking people walking around our campus after we did the experiment we caught seven Birds again the to control faces no masks or Dick Cheney didn't elicit a response but the caveman elicited a strong response in any form upside down with a hat without a hat they really picked up on this guy and they scolded and dived and chased this person whenever he walked on campus and that continues today this graph shows the change over eight years and time with the response to the caveman basically doubling over the course of this eight year period almost every bird involved in the scolding of the caveman was not ever touched or harmed by the caveman either they've all learned this by observing one another scold many of the bird scolding today were never even born when the caveman first caught birds seven and a half years ago so where in the brain might this sort of behavior sit we have again done some PET imaging brain scanning of these birds so we can see what parts are activated when they look out and see the person that caught them which is what you see in the first panel of MRIs there versus look out and see a person who's been taking care and feeding them for the last several weeks and there's a very strong difference when they look out and see the person that caught them their amygdala is active exactly as yours would be if you saw a danger that you learned in your environment the right hemisphere of their amygdala in the second panel there you see the response to the caring face and there the reward circuit of the brain is activated they're anticipating like Pavlov's dog and perhaps feeding by this person they've 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 maybe mourn the loss of a longtime mate so we tried to simulate this in the lab as well and what we showed our Birds was a new person they'd never seen a new mask holding this particular dead crow in this case how would they react to that in their brain you might expect the amygdala would be activated if they were having an emotional response like we showed in the top panel there when they looked out and saw that person who caught them but it's not the case the bottom panel when they look out and see a person holding a dead crow it's the hippocampus that's active they're learning about this danger they're accumulating this knowledge of a dangerous person or place in storing it apparently in their hippocampus all right well let me just end by suggesting that these birds are very successful in our environment because they've learned to live with us they consider us very carefully they recognize us they take this information and they act on it often by their success they challenge us we're afraid of their diseases we're upset by their noise or perhaps were challenged by the fact that they eat other animals as well I would just ask that we take that information and consider it as carefully as the birds are considering us think about what we have done to the environment that might have set them on this path and how we could fix that without pulling out the gun first as which is our typical reaction to these animals and getting rid of them without I would thank you for your attention you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 652,527

Rating: 4.8976669 out of 5

Keywords: ted, United States Of America (Country), Seattle (City/Town/Village), Crow (Organism Classification), English Language (Human Language), TEDx, ted talks, tedx talk, science, ted talk, Wildlife (Broadcast Content), tedxrainier, tedx talks, ted x, tedx, biology

Id: 0fiAoqwsc9g

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/greatgildersleeve]

I think you a word.

[u/[deleted]]

Don't fuck with corvids, they know what's up.

[u/Mildly_Concerned_Doe]

Crows are smart. If you mess with them, they'll mess right back. They've been known to give people gifts if they like them, and train their young to attack assholes.

[u/TinyThimble]

A group of crow are called a murder for all those who are confused

Edit: I don’t know why I’m getting hate it literally says it right here http://crow.bz/main/murder.htm