Justin Hui Writing 39C Portfolio

Learning

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Social Learning, a sign of complex social systems and intelligence, can be described simply as “learning dangers by observing others,” (2012) as done by John Marzluff, famous crow behaviorist and wildlife scientist from University of Washington. He is a leader in crow brain mapping, behavior study, and animal consciousness. Marzluff has written many different studies on crows, some examples include understanding how they react to "dead" conspecifics, "dangerous" faces, and much more. Done on wild crows, his recent study, “Social Learning Spreads Knowledge about Dangerous Humans among American Crows.” (2012) could be treated similar to an extension of his previous experiments. Knowing that crows were able to recognize faces of “dangerous” people, using the similar method to his 2010 study, he now captured crows and marked them while wearing a mask. By subjecting the crows to an unpleasant experience, he then tracked the amount and range of  “scolding” done by the crows while wearing the mask used during capture. This would be compared to a control done with a different mask.

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    What Marzluff and his team discovered was that there was “a linear increase in scolding over a 5-year period as the number of opportunities to observe scolding, but not trapping, increased,” (2012). What this means is that over a long period of time, not only was it the crows who were captured, but other crows as well were able to learn and understand if someone was a threat to them. Marzluff reports that “Horizontal and vertical transmissions of information… appeared to account for much of the scolding we observed,” (2012). Horizontal, referring to peer-to-peer learning, and vertical referring to parent-to-young learning. Both forms of the transfer of information show the complex and outstanding ability of the crows. The crows demonstrate both an incredible ability of learning, as well as recognition; not only for their own species, but for humans as well. These two things are key signs of intelligence as shown by Safina. The ability to learn shows a complex and adaptive decision-making process, requiring an advanced consciousness. Additionally, recognition and differentiation, Safina describes as a leading indicator for  “Self-awareness,” a requirement for higher levels of thinking. Yet at the same time, there are many people who believe birds and crows to be lesser and less intelligent than other animals like their dogs or cats.

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Impulses

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    Beyond intelligence, crows are also capable of much more. Self-control, or “overcoming impulsivity towards immediate gratification in favour of a greater but delayed reward,” (2014) as described by Friederike Hillemann, is a form of conscious decision-making which has only been seen in a limited number of nonhuman animals. Hillemann is a behavioral ecologist, with significant work done with different avian species' behaviors and social networks. Currently a postdoctoral researcher for Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Hillemann had an experiment to test the impulse control in her study, “Waiting for Better, Not for More: Corvids Respond to Quality in Two Delay Maintenance Tasks.” The goal was to see if crows would be willing to trade an initial food item for a preferred one at a later point. Based on the primate studies done by Drapier et al. (2005), Dufour et al. (2007), and Pele et al. (2010, 2011), if an exchange failed with one test subject, that subject would be exempt from future tests. There were 4 tests done on the crows, the “exchange” test where crows exchanged their food directly; and the “accumulation” test, where crows deposited their food into a sealed box, and did not receive the reward until all the food was deposited. Of these two tests, each had a version where the crows received either an increase in quality, or an increase in quantity of the food item.

 

    What Hillemann found was that crows were willing to trade when the prize was of greater quality, but not if the prize gave more. Additionally, the longest successful test case had the crow wait for ten minutes before the trade. What they concluded was that “corvids take the loss of (the initial) food into consideration when deciding whether to wait for a more valuable reward,” (2014) and that the crows would make conscious decisions when trading. What they also concluded for the failed tests was that it may be caused from the birds’ lack of interest in the rewards, rather than a lack of ability or intelligence. This showed the crows’ ability to utilize high-level conscious decision making, for intertemporal decisions. Impulse-control is also a sign of intelligence, not only in animals, but humans as well. Hillemann describes it as “a core competence of ‘executive functions’ (Miyake et al., 2000), which strongly predicts individual academic success and involvement in society” (2014). Thus, the success of this experiment shows a great deal behind the intelligence of crows, with their abilities of conscious decision-making and impulse-control. Despite this, many birds are not respected by people, and even hunted in some states as pests.

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Differentiation

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There are many things that humans do unconsciously that we don’t attribute to intelligence, but is still a clear sign of it in other animals, such as impulse-control, or active-learning. Discrimination is a similar ability, describing the ability to differentiate and assign certain connotations to things, a clear sign of self-awareness. Wascher in her experiment found that crows were able to do this. Claudia Washer is a behavioral ecologist of a similar vein to Hillemann, doing many studies together, and works as a researcher at Anglia Ruskin University. She has also done a lot of different work revolving around social behaviors of many different animals, not just crows. In her recent experiment, “Carrion Crows Learn to Discriminate between Calls of Reliable and Unreliable Conspecifics,” she separated crows into 4 groups, placing a fake “dead” crow in the middle, such that only one group can see the dead crow at a time. By playing a recording of 4 different alarm calls, one for each of the groups. The “correct” alarm call would be different for each group, and the crows would theoretically learn to distinguish the “reliable” one from the others. This would be measured through the crows’ reactions and vocalizations in response to the recordings. Just like Marzluff’s work, the goal was to see if crows were capable of recognizing, and learning about different individuals; similar to how Marzluff’s crows could recognize the “cave man” who captured them.

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    What Wascher found was that “the number of watching events was significantly higher in response to reliable compared with unreliable model stimuli,” (2015). What this means is that the crows were able to distinguish different calls from crows and associate it with a certain connotation, such as “reliable” or “unreliable” as seen with their differing reactions. This is important for the same reason as Marzluff’s study, in which this ability of recognition for the crows is a clear sign of self-awareness. Something highly important for intelligence.