Crows Are Surprisingly Good at Geometry

Crows are good in geometry. Malay,T looks very surprised

By Gayong Lee Edited by Elison Parel

The crows sometimes have a bad wrap: they are called loud and disruptive, and the myths around birds add them to death or unfortunate. But crows are more worth love and charity, say Andreas fearlessA neurophyziologist at the University of Tubingan in Germany. They can be not only incredibly cute, cuddly and social, but also very smart – especially when it comes to geometry, as Nieder has found.

In a paper published on Friday Science advance, Fearless and their colleagues report that crows Display an impressive qualification in different shapes Using geometric irregularities as a cognitive cue. These crows can also understand a very subtle difference. For the experiment, crows were placed in front of a digital screen, which, like a video game, display more complex combinations of shapes. First, the crow was taught to peck in a certain size for a reward. They were then presented with the same size among the five others – for example, a star shape was placed between five moon shapes – and he was rewarded if they were correctly selected “exterior”.

“Initially (exterior) was very clear,” fearless says. But once the crows introduced themselves to how the “game” worked, the Needer and his team introduced the more similar quadrilateral figures to see if the crows would still be able to identify the outlair. “And they could tell us, for example, if they saw a figure that was not just a class, then a little slant between all other classes,” fearless. “They can really do it comfortably (and) discrimination on external shapes based on geometric differences, without us to train them to train them.” Even when researchers stopped rewarding him with behavior, the crows continued to peck the outlers.

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Telling strictly based shapes on geometric qualities, such as side length or internal angle, it is very difficult, it is very difficult, it is very difficult, Georgio wallortingaraA neuroscientist at Trento University in Italy. Vallartigaras, which were not involved in new studies, suggest that almost all animals somewhat recognize the difference in the length or region of the surfaces. But it requires even more cognitive sophistication to identify that, for example, squares and triangles have different numbers of sides or flat, two-dimensional surfaces have different internal-angles shapes on two-dimensional surfaces.

“The general approach among scientists was that the appropriate geometric, euclidion knowledge applied to objects … was possibly limited to humans,” Vallortingara is called. Nieder’s work is now “challenging this approach – because crows show a kind of comfortable, strictly conceptual recognition of geometric qualities.”

But why are crows good in geometry? The possibility of the reason is evolutionary, scientists say. “I suspect that the original and campaign for the development of these abilities is mainly with spatial orientation,” Vallortingara is called. “It may be, depending on forging habits or other things, (crows) more needed to develop (compared to other species).”

On the other hand, geometric intellect is also an important part of recognizing faces, for example, because we use the position of individuals such as to distinguish the eyes and mouth between individuals. If so, Crows can use their geometric intelligence for mate selection or personal recognition, calling Vallortingara.

Of course, such benefits can easily apply to other animals, and with both fearless and vallortigara it is surprising that it would not be surprising that other birds or any other animals were also capable of equal tricks for this case. “All these abilities, at the end of the day, have developed, from an biological perspective, as they provide a survival benefit or reproductive benefits,” fearless.

These abilities can also develop through many different methods. For example, our cerebral cortex, “site in the brain that is integrating all types of information and making us smart and conscious,” did not develop in birds, which is a very simple system of independent neurons instead, tell fearless. But despite these genetic differences, “These animals are very intelligent – therefore, obviously, development found two different ways to give birth to flexible flexible animals.”

Nieder hopes that future research will show which parts of Crow’s brain are responsible for this geometric intelligence. “It is very important that we can work with animals and find these animals as well. We learn a lot about their brain, but also about our brain because we have fundamental skills that we share with them.”