alt Hacker NewsWe kind of do though since we don't see crows accumulating knowledge at any scale comparable to humans and using this knowledge to shape their environment in increasingly complex ways. And crows very obviously do make tools and even teach each other to do it, so it's not like they don't have the inclination for it.
The language itself is a a human invention, and a product of how our brains are wired. However, there's a dialectical process here where the language shapes us in turn, and both our minds and our language evolve together. The reason we have more things to say stems from us accumulating knowledge and expanding out horizons through the use of our language.
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They're not saying humans don't have profound communication advantages. Obviously the crows don't have nuclear generators and spacecraft. They're saying that the categorical claims about why humans have profound advantages aren't correct.
But scale of knowledge acquisition is mediated by, at minimum, lifespan, and what knowledge there is to verbalize and pass on, no? It’s not like we got the language then built our hands based on the knowledge shared by another person with hands.
Instead, these co-evolved. Our language is shaped by that, and we shouldn’t give it too much causal power when it’s only a slice of the system.
We are also very unclear on what birds can communicate. They’re social migratory species with 4 color vision and magnetoreception. Their sensory context is deeper and richer in some ways, and whatever communication they layer atop it will be shaped by that. What seems like squeaks and chirps can hold information that another bird, but not humans, can decode. We’re getting better at layering all this context and then interpreting bird song and sounds.
But we’re at the beginning of this exercise, not a place where we can make a firm conclusion.