alt Hacker NewsBird brains (2023)
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Worth nothing that the "mirror test" may not be accurate for a lot of animals - like dogs. Dogs are a lot more sensitive to smell, and can pass smell-based mirror-test-equivalents.
Parrot owner here. This doesn't surprise me at all. I'm actually a bit surprised they cared about the gyms!
This fits right into the ABC model of parrot psychology:
https://www.parrots.org/pdfs/all_about_parrots/reference_lib...
Adding to this a chart of neuron count [1]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
I work on some aspects of intelligence in birds, primarily in songbirds. There have been some effort finding general intelligence ("g" cognitive factor) in birds since last 15-20 years. The results have been mixed as you would expect. Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival and designing experiments to test those are quite hard.
Research has shown brain size matters but not that much, we should look at relative brain size.
Makes sense, given that to birds, optimizing for weight is everything. But seeing that the ridiculously smart border collies have a comparatively low density of neurons, clearly there’s more to intelligence than that.
“More neurons = intelligence” always felt like an oversimplification. If that were true, we wouldn’t be surprised by birds or octopuses anymore.
https://nautil.us/the-great-silence-237510
One of my all time favourite short stories, with or without intelligent parrots.
Time for me to read it again. This is the Arecibo story, don't miss if you haven't read it before.
"You be good".
Strangely enough, was having a lot of difficulty coaxing google to fetch this link.
Makes me think of our current quest with creating AGI, that the metrics for measuring animal brains don't necessarily correlate nicely with "intelligence" or capability.
I imagine an alternate world filled only with intelligent robots that are trying to create "biological-agi" from scratch and are supremely frustrated at the results, throwing neuron count and density at the problem without understanding the fundamental properties that actually create intelligence.
Been to NZ once. Keas are indeed the coolest parrots ever. Climb to the top of Avalanche Peak and you’re guaranteed to see some soaring in the sky, with snowy Mt. Rolleston in the background. Kiwis call them alpine parrots, but they are not. They were common on both islands before Polynesian/Maori hunted many of them, and European ranchers forced them to retreat to high beech forests and alpine zones. Another place is Dart Hut, I even found some kea feathers there.
It seems like animals that have to memorize a really wide variety of plants, fruit, flowers, etc tend to have complex and dense brains
Birds are highly optimized. For example, all cells contain a full genome. The genomes in birds are a lot smaller - less trash DNA - which saves them weight and generally makes the cells more efficient.
This is Alex the parrot, mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYkFdu5FJk
Reminds me of:
https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/news070716-15.h...
> Scans reveal a fluid-filled cavity in the brain of a normal man.
Given parrots can talk, there must be a neuron count that activates language (assuming anatomy allows it), similar to LLM parameter count.
Parrots are definitely smart, but birds generally pack a lot into a small mass. That's required for flight.
It makes you wonder how smart their ancestors- dinosaurs- were.
is this a straight-up advantage, or is the trade-off lower connectivity?
Birds are evolutionarily optimized for low mass.
> Dr. Irene Pepperberg studied an African grey parrot named Alex for 30 years. Alex could identify objects, colours, shapes, and numbers. He understood abstract concepts like "same" and "different." His vocabulary exceeded 100 words. When he died in 2007, his last words to Pepperberg were reportedly "You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow." I don't care how you define intelligence -- that one's hard to brush off.
The author takes forgranted the claim of intelligence; and does not assess at all whether the researcher simply said those words to the parrot every night. (Why not? It sounds exactly like what a researcher would tell a parrot before turning off the lights.) A quick search on Wikipedia says the parrot was also found dead in the morning, not in the implied "parrot has last words" scenario.
> Calling someone a "bird brain" is honestly more of a compliment.
Well no. Some birds are flat-out dumb. Chickens for example.
bird brains are a die shrink of mammalian brains.
This gives a whole new meaning to the term “stochastic parrots” for LLMs :)
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If you haven't seen Apollo on YT, crazy
What is it made out of? meTUL
Want a pistach
I have to imagine that given birds are descendants of dinosaurs, which evolved quite a long time ago, they've had a lot more time to optimize certain things.
If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.