Bird Brain: Way too smart

First off, I want to say that watching the movie/documentary, they are super smart. How come I didn't know this?

Anyways, the film went over mainly crows and parrots, since they have the largest brains. Throughout the film there were many different tests done on each of the species to test problem-solving, social learning, recognition, and emotions.

The problem solving capabilities of these birds were amazing, most of the puzzles left for the bird were solved correctly. I think the one that was the most interesting to me was the test done on geese to remember a hierarchy of colors to receive food (31:50). This one stood out to me because it not only tested the geese's ability to remember color pairs, but the whole list of different colors and their values. Additionally the geese were able to infer that if a>b and b>c, then a>c. Which was super interesting. Also because the fact the test was done on geese and not crows or parrots shows that even less intelligent animals may still be more intelligent than we assume.

Social learning and recognition was shown very well by the test done by John Marzluff from University of Washington(45:43). Marzluff was also referenced many times in the "Animal Minds" Times Magazine articles. Basically, when he captured and tagged the crows on his campus, he wore a mask. Several years later, when he wore the mask again and walked around the crows, he was then bombarded by crows, many of which were never exposed to the mask. This shows that information about this "masked man" was passed between crows and additionally passed thorough generations of crows to represent danger to them.

I think, most importantly that these birds were also capable of showing emotions. The most striking case was with Wek the Crow(16:15). The saddest thing about her is that her partner died, and as a result she started to pick her feathers. The fact that crows are able to mate for life, and then be able to mourn for their lost partner seems so human and sad that it made me remember the scene even though it isn't mentioned again in the movie.

Ultimately, I feel like after taking deep looks into other larger animals, like apes, or dolphins, seeing that birds are also able to show intelligence at a similar or even greater level is amazing.