I hope the birds take over soon. Human intelligence seems to be devolving
3 weeks ago | 12
I'll remember to ask the crows next time in my neural networking class what they think.
3 weeks ago | 2
Our brains are so good, we destroyed the only planet we can simply inhabit. Really, top notch.
3 weeks ago | 26
How about Trump's brain structure? Is it bird-like or mammal-like? Or some third type? Did anybody check?
2 weeks ago | 1
You've all heard of neural networks.... Presenting the all new Birdal network
3 weeks ago | 2
I don’t think it makes sense to conclude that birds have better intelligence for less space because of a fundamental difference in the structure. Humans have huge selective pressure on brain size yet we evolved around it rather than restructuring. It suggests at least that there are some different optimizations being made by each structure.
3 weeks ago | 12
yes but those animals dont have hands....so they might be able to use simple tools but they can never build large cities and cars or clothes so because of that they will always have to scavange for food and live on the edge of dying everyday
2 weeks ago | 0
There's term "bird-headed" in Korean, meaning someone is stupid. Well, birds seem to be not bird-headed.
3 weeks ago | 0
Completely ignores the sentient, conscious state harnessed by the brain. It’s a completely different phenomenon to intelligence or problem solving. That mechanism is what’s interesting. Find the root cause of that.
3 weeks ago | 1
its kinda like potential energy....and kinetic energy....sure those animals have the basic understanding of physics and life they live on earth just like we do....but they cannot put any of it to use...and they wouldnt even know what it would take to sustain their understanding because it would all be so new to them...like written language or paintings that can be passed down to the next generation
2 weeks ago | 0
Quanta Magazine
Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan for the future, crows count and use tools, cockatoos open and pillage booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.
“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”
Researchers have long debated about the relationship between avian and mammalian intelligences. One possibility is that intelligence in vertebrates — animals with backbones, including mammals and birds — evolved once. In that case, both groups would have inherited the complex neural pathways that support cognition from a common ancestor: a lizardlike creature that lived 320 million years ago, when Earth’s continents were squished into one landmass. The other possibility is that the kinds of neural circuits that support vertebrate intelligence evolved independently in birds and mammals.
It’s hard to track down which path evolution took, given that any trace of the ancient ancestor’s actual brain vanished in a geological blink. So biologists have taken other approaches — such as comparing brain structures in adult and developing animals today — to piece together how this kind of neurological complexity might have emerged.
A series of studies published in @sciencemagazine in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently.
🐤 Read the full story: www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence-evolved-at-lea…
🎨 Credit
1, 2: Samantha Mash for Quanta Magazine
3: Courtesy of Bastienne Zaremba
4: Tatiana Gallego Flores
5: Mark Belan/Quanta Magazine
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 1,260