'Stone the crows! Could corvids be Australia's smartest export?'

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Yes indeed. I remember Richard Zann who was the animal behaviour man at La Trobe Uni and my supervisor there for my honours year (1978) and who died in his house with his wife and daughter in Kinglake in the Victorian fires, saying a similar thing about whales and why don't they learn to avoid ships (from which they have been harpooned for centuries). Hard to know an answer to these things. About the golf ball thing. I suppose the instinct for a super normal stimulus is so strong it overrides a learning thing for a long time.

 

Philip

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Robinson [
Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012 7:57 PM
To: 'CanberraBirds'
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] 'Stone the crows! Could corvids be Australia's smartest export?'

Thanks for the interesting article.  But… if corvids are so smart (plenty of examples given) how come they still can’t tell the difference between an egg and a golf ball? (as also mentioned).  Weight, shape, dimples, hieroglyphs, location … there’d seem to be plenty of clues?

 

 

Julian

www.flickr.com/photos/ozjulian/

 

 

From: David McDonald (personal) [
Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012 13:09
To: CanberraBirds
Subject: [canberrabirds] 'Stone the crows! Could corvids be Australia's smartest export?'

 

A great article by Stephen Debus in today's issue of The Conversation:
"Stone the crows! Could corvids be Australia's smartest export?"
http://theconversation.edu.au/stone-the-crows-could-corvids-be-australias-smartest-export-4346
David

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