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Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow

PLOS Media · 9.8M views · 2014-03-26 · 3:18

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Overview

A silent PLOS ONE video of New Caledonian crows solving Aesop's Fable puzzles by dropping objects to raise water and reach food. It shows example trials from experiments testing causal understanding of water displacement.

On Hacker News

Used as vivid evidence of crow intelligence and animal physical reasoning in discussions of cognition.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2015–2023

Topics

Animals & naturePsychology & human behavior
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crowsanimal cognitionwater displacementtool useaesop's fable

What people said

boltefnovor · 2020-09 · Recommendation

This video is a startling verification.of the crows mental capabilities. “Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow” [VIDEO]

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danmostudco · 2019-12 · Recommendation

Crows are astoundingly intelligent. If you're having a slow day, a quick youtube of "crows solving puzzles" yields some great videos of them solving complicated tasks like water displacement to reach food[0]. I believe raccoons share this achievement. Additionally, there was a thread on here some time ago[1] by a Dutch Startup[2] about trying to teach crows to exchange cigarette butts for treats inside a tiny device place in parks, I always thought that was a funny idea if you could get the crows to teach one another. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK]

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lr4444lr · 2016-03 · Recommendation

The reasoning ability and executive function of birds, crows in particular, is astonishing. Intelligence (certain kinds, at least) may be just as reliant on brain:body mass ratio as it is on overall brain size and complexity. [LINK] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by PLOS Media, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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