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I
think the chances are high that John is probably correct, except with the
caution that we cannot possibly truly know whether birds can think such
things. Or indeed any other animal. Just that there is no good reason to
believe they do. About Birds
are a bit far down the evolutionary tree to have the brain structures required,
well that is by virtue of that we assess that the point at which birds
extruded from reptiles, via being small dinosaurs, is from an earlier point in
reptile evolution than the point at which mammals evolved from a different group
of reptiles. Otherwise birds are not a lesser class of fauna. The relevant brain
structures may be in different parts of the brain from ours. Bird intelligence
is not outside and below the intelligence range of mammals (as in there is an
overlap). Then again it is an anthropomorphic question, comparing to the
special case of humans.
I
think Geoffrey's graphic was close to the truth.
or
following the original story, the raven just got tired of waiting and took
a chance.
While quite intelligent, Birds are a bit far down the evolutionary tree to
have the brain structures required for the kind of emotions, self-reflection and
world view associated with the kind of self-planned suicides that humans
sometimes demonstrate. At the level of birds we have a range of associative
learning styles, from trial and error, associative and (in bigger birds at
least) imitation. This bird appears to have taken the Avian Darwin Award for
this year, bring an end to whatever association had developed in its neural
network which initiated this particular action. Other birds which use walking
out into traffic as a way of successfully cracking nuts are clearly on a more
adaptive evolutionary track!
John
On 30 Mar 2014, at 4:18 pm, "muriel story" <>
wrote:
Sounds quite significant behaviour considering a pub out Yanco way
had a standing prize of a slab of ale for anyone who ran over what all would
call a Crow. I understand the prize has never been claimed.
Muriel
On Saturday, March 29, 2014, Brian Thorp <> wrote:
My daughter-in-law told me of a
strange incident last week in a busy part of Civic.
There was a raven
standing close to the side of the road who spent about five minutes
carefully and intently watching every car go by.
Eventually it walked
calmly out just as a car came up, timing it such that the driver could not
avoid killing it.
Does anyone have any likely
explanation?
Thanks,
Brian
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