Clever Corvids: unique beaks for tool use (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 18, 2016, 16:17 (3172 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The question that cannot be answered is why the crows started using tools in the first place. It may have been a matter of chance because most birds do just fine foraging with their beaks and feet without resorting to tool-making, McGowan said."
 
David's comment: McGowan's point is the NC crows have a non-required phenotypic change. Why did it happen, or was it given?
 
dhw: It just doesn't seem to occur even to those people who study these birds, and know how intelligent they are, that these crows might have started using tools because some particularly clever one(s) devised a new method of getting to a nosh. And when it worked, as with all successful inventions, it caught on.. -DAVID: You are now anthropomorphizing crows! One lucky crow guy discovers a trick for tool use. Does he tell the others about it or do they fly around watching him and learn the trick as us flightless humans do? The research fellow knows the crows are smart which is why he studies them. His point was the other birds get by without this style of beak, so why did it appear? My answer, the innate drive to complexity we see in evolution, something Denton comments about in his book, I've just found.-To say that crows are intelligent enough to use tools is not an anthropomorphization! How does any innovation catch on? Do you think your God preprogrammed every Caledonian crow to suddenly start using tools? Organisms can learn from other organisms, and in due course new behaviour may also lead to physical adaptations. Why did it appear? What you call the innate drive to complexity is what I call the drive for survival and improvement. The difference between us is simply that you attribute every improvement to divine preprogramming or intervention, whereas I suggest it is due to the intelligence of the organisms themselves, possibly invented by your God.