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Magpies Are Self-Aware
FireStormZ writes "Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals. It had been thought only four species of apes, bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror. But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies, a species with a brain structure very different from mammals, could also identify themselves. It had been thought that the neocortex brain area found in mammals was crucial to self-recognition. Yet birds, which last shared a common ancestor with mammals 300 million years ago, don't have a neocortex, suggesting that higher cognitive skills can develop in other ways."
Oh, grow up they do, eventually chirping: "Fark this nest, we no digg it no mo'."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Perhaps the rest of the peasants were on the other side of the bush.... waiting....
Come on, don't be silly now - next you'll be saying there could have been pheasants there!