A
crow is supposedly as smart as a 7-year-old. Here’s how scientists figured
that—and other facts—out.
December
09, 2015
Forget
the old saying: Birds are pretty bright. They’re capable of navigating
thousands of miles during biannual migrations, using tools to better access
their food, and even counting
from left to right. The basic definition of intelligence is the ability to
solve novel problems, says Damian Scarf,
a psychology professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. And at least
some birds have the knack—heck, crows’ reasoning skills might even be on par
with those of a
7-year-old child.
Unlike
kids, however, birds can’t be convinced to sit down and take IQ tests. So how
do researchers suss out avian smarts? They have a battery of bird-specific
tests that assess the baseline braininess of species as a whole, and show the
range of avian intelligence between species and individuals (just like humans,
some individual birds are brighter than others).
Here
is a sampling of standardized tests and creative assessments that scientists
have used to gauge bird intelligence.
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