Bird Brain

Coming into this video, I was not sure what to expect in regard to what the film would cover. Cleary, it would be on birds, but I wondered what exactly about birds were these researchers going to educate me on. To my surprise, what I learned was more than fascinating. It is quite astonishing the skills that these two species - Crows and parrots- are able to display when confronted with a problem to solve. As shown on the video, the audience is given information on how researchers initially thought birds were not intelligent and their only form of problems solving was insight, which is essentially instinct. With further research and many experiments later, researchers were able to find that when approaching a bird with a challenge, they could display an action never before taught to them in order to get to the desired treat that was initially given. In a moment of the video, the birds were presented with a problem that required team work in order for them to obtain a treat from the food box. In the video, the narrator tells us, "Like geese, kea parrots live in social groups with complex relationships. This experiment tests whether they can work together as a group." (35:31). Shortly after, we are taken to the inside of where the experiment takes place and closely watch how the birds work together to stand on the opposing sides, and even take turns in order to receive a treat.

We were also presented with a clip of what researchers think could have been crows showing emotion; researchers set up what looked like a deceased crow and within minutes, other crows around began to gather amongst the trees and began to screech. In a second of the video, John Marzluff states, "I think birds feel emotion. Maybe not exactly like we do, but they've got the parts of the brain that cause us to feel calm or anxious or fearful" (48:36). Birds have those same chemicals, that when released in the brain, motivate emotion. Much like the articles from week 1, we are presented with how animals show theory of mind, object permanency and are able to understand hierarchies. In the TIME article, Animals have brains, but do they have minds? there's an excerpt that tells, "Crows and other corvids excel at tool use, a function of both clever brain wiring and the birds' complex social structure" (11). From that excerpt, I made the connection that with further research, we are able to make connection to different species and their talents and ability to become problem solvers.