2:00PM,
NOVEMBER 23, 2015
Call
someone a “bird brain” and they are sure to be offended. After all, it’s just
another way of calling someone “stupid.” But it’s probably time to retire the
insult because scientists are finding more and more evidence that birds can be
pretty smart. Consider these five species:
Pigeons
We
may call pigeons “flying rats” for their penchant for hanging out in cities and
grabbing an easy meal. (Long before there was “pizza rat,” you know there had to be “pizza
pigeons” flying around New York City.) But there may be more going on in their
brains than just where to find a quick bite. Richard Levenson of the University
of California, Davis Medical Center and colleagues trained pigeons to recognize
images of human breast cancers. In tests, the birds proved capable of sorting
images of benign and malignant tumors. In fact, they were just as good as
humans, theresearchers
report November
18 in PLOS ONE. In keeping with the pigeons’ reputation, though, food
was the reward for their performance.
New
Caledonian crows
No
one would suspect the planet’s second-best toolmakers would be small black birds
flying through mountain forests on an island chain east of Australia. But New
Caledonian crows have proven themselves not only keen toolmakers but also
pretty good problem-solvers, passing some tests that even dogs (and pigeons)
fail. For example, when scientists present an animal with a bit of meat on a
long string dangling down, many animals don’t ever figure out how to get the
meat. Pull it up with one yank, and the meat is still out of reach. Some
animals will figure out how to get it through trial and error, but a wild New
Caledonian crow solved the problem — pull, step on string, pull some more — on
its first try.
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