NOVA Bird Brain Response

This week, I was assigned a documentary film to watch, called Nova Bird Brain. This documentary focused on the cognitive abilities of Aves.

This documentary featured multiple researchers and their experiments. Here are some short descriptions of three of the researchers:

1. John Marzluff is a professor at the University of Washington. He is most known for his research in crow behavior, which suggest that crow's cognitive abilities are quite similar to humans.

2. Auguste Von Bayern is a zoologist that studies animal thinking. She has conducted studies related to parrots and their reasoning skills.

3. Ludwig Huber is an Austrian biologist and a professor at the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. He researches animal cognition among a variety of species.

In addition to researchers, here are were some quotes I found to be important to take away from this documentary:

“If they pull a string that is offset from the food, this really implies that they have a plan and that’s the real key. They are able to plan this out mentally, work out the steps and employ it correctly when they see the task.” (12:16).

I chose this quote because it proves that birds doing have advanced cognitive processes and do not just rely on instinct. They are capable of learning - which raises a lot more questions on the extent of their intelligence.

“The number of neurons is a better indication of brain power than the physical size of the brain and this interesting thing we’ve learned recently that bird brains actually pack a lot more neurons into a particular area than do mammal brains.” (13:30).

I chose this quote because it provides a reason as to why birds are so smart. They do have a comparable amount of neurons to humans, which is really cool.

Overall, I found this documentary to be insightful. I learned a lot about Aves' cognitive abilities. I did already have background knowledge on crows and their intelligence, but I was surprised by the research on the parrots and ravens. I liked the box study the most, where birds were given a box that had multiple solutions to obtaining the peanut (prize). It was interesting to see how the crow refused to stick their head into the box - opting to use a stick to manipulate the prize out of the box. This was a strong example of using past experiences to problem solve. Some other experiments prove that Aves have transitive inference skills, as they can remember and rank colors. Aves are proven to be patient, because when given a choice to wait for a bigger prize - birds chose correctly.

One of the experiments in the documentary tested whether crows could learn to use a hook to obtain food. In the experiment, the crows are able to successfully use the hook-tool given to them. However, this is attributed to their innate ability to use tools in the wild. The video quotes, "New Caledonian crows are the only species of bird that's been observed to use hook tools in the wild." (27:09). Similarly, a TIME article I had read in Week One mentioned crows using hook tools as well. In an Animal Minds issue of TIME, Kluger writes,"Crows, for example, have proved themselves adept at bending wire to create a hook so they can fish a basket of food from the bottom of a plastic tube."

This documentary brings up the idea that animals may be more intelligent than we previously thought.