Clever Corvids: unique beaks for tool use (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 09:58 (3168 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I believe some species live in communities of thousands!
DAVID: Hyperbole won't do! 
dhw: A quick google has come up with the following:
“Crows have been congregating in large roosts in the fall and winter for as long as there have been crows. Crow roosts can range from small scattered roosts of under one hundred individuals to the spectacularly large roosts of hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million crows! A roost in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma was estimated to hold over two million crows (Gerald Iams, 1972, State of Oklahoma Upland Game Inventory W-82-R-10). Most roosts are much smaller, but roosts of tens of thousands are common.” -DAVID: No nests are built after the Spring! Perhaps there are teaching sessions over the winter.-No hyperbole, then. It doesn't matter when lessons begin, or how many lessons are needed, or when crows observe other crows using tools. Once the first clever crow has come up with his/her “invention”, there are perfectly simple ways in which other crows can take it up. God did not need to preprogramme every Caledonian crow to start using tools.-DAVID: Since the simplest parts of our brain function are similar, I think the emotions we see, fear, interest, aggression, etc. can be common, but I'm not at all sure we evolved ours from the organisms that preceded us, but instead developed our own forms of them.
dhw: Every species develops its own forms of behaviour, or its own ways of surviving and/or improving. I would suggest that is how evolution works. In the case of homo sapiens, the developments are so sophisticated that some folk don't even recognize that sending tanks into a neighbouring country is a development from Max the monkey snatching a banana from sister Minnie.-DAVID: Sometimes we agree a bit. These are parallel developments. Self-protection for survival is built into life.-Issue settled, so long as you agree that aggression, fear, the need to explore, social cooperation, parental love etc. etc. are common to the organisms that have preceded us, and are not human inventions.