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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."
It has been known that magpies can solve various kinds of mechanical puzzles, much better than most (all?) other birds and even mammals. Now this isn't related to self-avareness, I guess, but it is quite interesting nonetheless.
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I had issues with self-aware animals being used for testing or being killed for food or tusks....
Now I have to worry about magpies? damn....I loves me Magpie meat.
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In Australia, when its nesting season for Magpies they swoop people who go within their territory. Now I had to walk a fair way to catch a bus which just happened to intersect with a couple of magpies. One particular time I had one swoop, peck and draw some blood on some demon birdesque fly-by. I ran and took shelter at a nearby mall and waited about 5 minutes or so. I saw other people walking around and assumed that the coast was clear and went on my merry way. However, said demon bird was waiting for me and attacked again. Why it didnt attack any of the other potential targets and instead wait for me I'll never know.
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Lookup the intelligent grey parrots Alex or N'kisi, of which the intelligence has been compared to the intelligence of 6 year old human. Their intelligence might have evolved as a as "a consequence of their history of cooperative feeding as largely tree-dwelling birds in central Africa" (wikipedia: gray parrots). It might be that mirror neurons play an important role in the developmenet of intelligence: "A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself acting. These neurons have been directly observed in primates, and are believed to exist in humans and in some birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex." (wikipedia mirror neuron).
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Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Now we can punish the thieving bastards by putting them in prison instead of just shooting them.
Crows have been observed making tools and using them.
Birds are in general a lot smarter than we've given them credit for. It might be time to rethink the term 'bird brain'.
A few years ago they tried the red dot on the forehead mirror test with Congressmen but got no reaction. As a control they tried taping a $100 bill to their foreheads and all quickly recognized the bill and reached for it. In an even more bizarre twist they seem to be able to find the bill even when blindfolded. They seemed to sniff the air so it was assumed they could smell the bill. Even stranger still when they taped a $1 bill to their foreheads it got no reaction even when they weren't blindfolded. The researchers concluded Congressmen were amazing creatures worthy of more study. As to them being self aware the tests were inconclusive.
Watching the roadkill feeding magpies cooly walk around just behind the white road lines, you can tell they have worked out a pretty solid theory for how cars move and that they understand how the cars are dangerous hazards but nevertheless predictable and avoidable. Other birds simply take flight in panic and some don't even recognize cars as a hazard - dumb turkeys and pheasants dumbly just obliviously waddle out in traffic.
In Tokyo crows - corvid relatives of magpies - have been observed figuring out how to exploit the traffic signal cycles. The crows drop nuts in the path of the cars, in the middle of the pedestrian crossings, and patiently sit overhead waiting for the light to change so they can go down and have a look and pick up the nuts crushed by the car tires. Maybe these crows developed a theory of cars as practical and dependable "thing crushers" - producing crispy roadkill and other delicious crush jobs.
Fascinating birds.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
...
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?
Birds actually have more brains than people realise - literally.
While they may not have a mammalian brain, they haven't been idle. Once they diverged from the rest of the raptor dinosaurs (or possibly before it, based on some evidence of mating/nesting habits), birds developed another brain 'layer' much like mammals did. This layer was not the same as the mammal one, but it was nonetheless more sophisticated than the reptilian brain stem we all inherit.
Certainly, birds have shown remarkable intelligence in various studies.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence
"In recent years it was realized that certain birds have developed high intelligence entirely convergently from mammals such as humans."
The mirror mark test is long known to be a very non-definitive method for testing for self awareness. For one, it is subject to the "Clever Hans" effect, so named after a horse who could allegedly perform simple addition. For two, it assumes that if the animal moves to view the mark better that it is aware that the mark is on its own body. By placing the mark on an obvious place on the body, movements for better viewing on another individual would be the same as movements for better viewing on your own body in a mirror. For three, it uses one type of control but not an important one. The control most often use is a dot on a nonobvious place on the body. For example, a black dot on black feathers. However the most important control would be to place a mark on another individual and see if the animal responds to that.
I've seen crows repeatedly charge into a (reflective) window thinking that it's another crow attacking them. It's not a "red dot" test, but it shows some lack of self-awareness.
It had been thought only four species of apes, bottlenose dolphins, Asian elephants and some select few C# programmers
If they are already self-aware, maybe we need to focus our resistance efforts on the magpies rather than a future computer system. Dark tidings indeed...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
Please understand what self-recognition in a mirror is. It has been known for a long time that dogs recognize their own scent, but with their black-and-white eyesight they have never shown any signs of recognizing themselves in a mirror, at least not in any social sense.
Skynet became self-aware on August 6, 1997.
Oops, we forgot its birthday this year again. I really hope it won't make a big deal about it.
She made the willows dance
195km/h
Don't Birds see a reflection of themselves in still water?
Don't they drink as opposed to fly away fearing for their safety?
Is this not a sign of self-awareness?
would be a great name for a band.
Doesn't this logic mean that vampires are not self-aware?
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Sometimes comes up in relation to cats. Never had a cat that didn't recognmize itself in the mirror. Routinely I can make eye contact with a cat in the mirror and it will turn toward the real me. Unravel the ramifications for a systems analysis of the AI.
But we had generally adopted adults. When we got kittens a few years ago, they didn't seem to recognize themselves in a mirror for many weeks. Which makes me wonder whether psychologists have often made the mistake of dismissing developmental psychology in other species. Perhaps thinking that kittens are more "pure" subjects?
Lesser mammels are pretty amazing too. Try to figure out what is going on when a squirrel or chipmunk runs a cat in circles around a tree. Risk-taking play behavior is an "interesting" way to ensure survival of the fittest.
Figures that the more alien the species, the harder to connect. Octopi would be an extreme example. If the estimates that they are as smart as dogs is true, it puts calamari in a different light. I'm good on the judgment that earthworms don't have the brain structures for consciousness, but we are only beginning to explore consciousness in humans much less the comparative physiology.
Magpies also have been known to kick the shit out of people. Some of them even going so far as to attack just a single person over and over again.
I had a lady friend who was in Cann River, OZ and before visiting she'd had a magpie attack and beat the hell out of her head.
This is not meant to be a excerpt from "The Holy Grail", but you aren't confusing Australian and European magpies are you? They are completely different birds. European magpies aren't the aggressive b***ers that Aussie ones are during the breeding season.
Anyone else wonder why they don't complete the experiment. The bird could simply be trying to establish if it has a sticker, like the other bird that it sees. This doesn't show self-recognition.
So you have a mirror, the bird sees the sticker and tries to remove a sticker from themselves. You also need to present an image of some other similar bird with a sticker and see if the subject assumes they too have a sticker.
You could have a two way mirror with a switch. You place either a model or real bird behind the mirror with a spot. See if when looking right through the mirror they behave the same. You'd also want to have the subject bird with a spot, looking in the mirror, flash off the lights and remove the spot, bring up the lights with the second bird behind the mirror with a spot on. Do they recognise the spot has gone (assuming they can't feel it's been removed)? This part would work well if the spot could be colour changed, eg by wetting.
I'd want to go further and use some video equipment for the mirror. That way you could test whether they perceive their own "reflection" when the image is flipped vertically. You could also digitally add a spot that wasn't there or present an image of the same bird with no spot when the bird subject does actually have a spot on.
Seems like quite a sloppy experiment - or are they just not telling us about the other parts.
Also since when was self-recognition == self-awareness?
PLoS has multiple videos of the magpies' behavior, all linked in the journal article.
Its not a magpie but still an amusing story...
There's a location near here that is in a park and often used for weddings. A company provides a service in which at which they release a bunch of white doves at the appropriate moment of the marriage ceremony. Very beautiful and touching.
Well as they were doing this at a recent ceremony, everything went perfectly until the doves were released, at which point red-shouldered hawk swooped down and took the first dove in flight just as it crossed in front of the altar. An ominous omen to be sure...
The guy from the company that released the doves was upset. When trying to console him over the odds of such a freak assurance happening again, he responded that this had been going on at every ceremony they do in this park for some time, the hawk figured out that wedding ceremony = doves, and even figured out the timing of the ceremony to know when they would be released...
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All your base are...
Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Cats. Anyone who's owned a cat for ANY length of time knows that these creatures are perfectly self aware of of their own bodies.
Verify it for yourself. Put a large mirror in a room where an adult cat can easily access it. Hold the cat so that they can see themselves in the mirror. They'll try to act as if they don't like what they see and want AWAY from the mirror. A few more aggressive males will even pretend to fight with it.
Now leave the cat unsupervised in front of the mirror and watch obliquely by pretending to read a book.
Most cats will start to examine themselves in the mirror after a few minutes, turning so that they can see their body parts at different angles. They'll never look directly at their own face because a wide-eyed inspecting stare makes them uncomfortable. However, they will use the mirror to examine their own backs.
Every cat I've ever owned has done this.
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I have faith that elephants exist. There is no way you can shake that faith.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It was a wasp, if I remember correctly. The wasp's "program" was to drag its paralyzed prey to its burrow, go inside the burrow and make sure the coast was clear, then return to the prey and drag it into the burrow.
But if the researchers moved the prey while the wasp was checking its burrow, it would reposition the prey and then check its burrow again. And it would repeat this as long as they kept moving it.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
slashdotters may understand how scarey this is if they realise that Australian Magpies are large enough to steal a spark plug socket that you just happen to leave near the car while you are changing a tyre and have to answer the phone. I paid twenty bucks for that socket and was really pissed off when, through the kitchen window, I saw it fly away firmly wedged in the magpies beak - little shithead.
I've observed many species of birds and animals at my house and I have come to the conclusion they not just have some reasonable level of intelligence but are actually insane as well.
When a few of my friends and I were getting drunk in my back yard, a possum fell out of a tree with an enormous thud. We actually pissed ourselves laughing, the possum actually looked embarrassed!!! I think the magpies are a lot smarter than the possums.
I saw kookaburra (they're the ones that make that laughing sound you hear in all the jungle movies - and that is what a backyard in Australia sounds like) whilst hunting for a meal - fuck it right up and crash into the ground wings still open. He got up, looked around, looked right at me and had a look that almost said "meh, just a human" and flew off. When the magpies, kurrawongs and kookies fight - it's worth watching the battles.
I saw three Magpies attacking a Indian Myna bird. Two of them were holding the Myna bird down on the hot road (it was hot!) while the third was jumping and swooping in a way that it's sharp beak was trying to break through the myna birds abdomen. I was amazed at the co-operation between the magpies. The Magpies seem to be scared shitless of lorikeets (a parrot) though. I have seen the lorikeets going for the magpies feet.
I think you'll find the magpie was giving you a compliment by saying - 'hey you've got the best hair I've seen, I'll take some for my nest human'. just face the little fucker and snap him if it gets to close - and be sure to chase it around when it's on the ground - it will learn pretty quick.
Magpies aren't just intelligent - they're crazy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Thanks for the assist. With a little googling I found its genus, the Sphex or 'Digger Wasp'.
...Why did you just sit there and take it?
Any narrow or specific measure of "intelligence" or "consciousness" will likely backfire. This is because intelligence is a complex, multifaceted thing, not any single feature.
Further, the variety of niches in biology almost guarantee that at least one critter will evolve the ability to pass a specific test. Some birds depend on twigs to fetch food in their regular activities, for example. These birds have turned out to show remarkable innovation and creative problem solving involving wires and sticks to obtain food via lab puzzles despite having peanut-sized brains.
Table-ized A.I.
I think anyone who has taken the time to really get to know a pet parrot could tell you they seem to be about as smart as a dog or cat. Which is astonishing given their far smaller brain size. I had a couple cockatiels, who must have had brains like raisins, yet they exhibited fairly impressive learning abilities. Beyond just imitation of word sounds, they could connect those sounds to situations; I trained them to say "I'm hungry" whenever I brought them food. A more interesting one was the phrase "good bird", which I had used as generic praise, but which the male cockatiel spontaneously applied during and immediately following coitus with his mate.
Another one that impressed me was learning to walk on a glass table: at first they were afraid to step off of a plate placed on the table, looking with suspicion at the transparent surface. Eventually, with some crumbs on it, they were willing to carefully try walking on the crumb-sprinkled parts. Eventually they ventured out onto the clean parts as well, and within a few meals they had become totally comfortable walking on the glass.
In any case, it doesn't totally shock me that some birds test as self aware. I think there must be a different model for intelligence in birds. Much like other areas, birds seem to have adapted a weight-efficient means of carrying around what they need.
Cheers.
One of my cats is 18 and (not to be too biased) one of the smartest cat's I've seen out of those I've known. I know he can easily recognize himself in a mirror and that he understands the concept of reflection well. He will often watch me from around the corner in a large hall mirror I have outside my office. If I call him from the office he will look at me in the mirror to see that I am motioning to him, then walk to where I am, not towards the reflection. He will also often clean in front of the mirror taking pauses to look at himself before moving on to another area. When done he'll leave for a more comfortable place to sleep.
My other cat ignored the mirror completely however he also never flipped out at his own, or his partner's reflections like he would when an unknown cat came into view. I can only infer that at some basic level he understood what a reflection was too.
What surprises me more is the limited list they assigned to mammals they thought were capable of this.
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Is this really the test/standard for self-awareness? I mean I guess its all a semantics debate at some level but I've always thought of self-awareness as being able to understand your (the self's) place in the grand scheme of society, Earth, and the Universe.
For instance, aren't robots at the level by now that they could be programmed to recognize their self in a mirror but perhaps not a similar model? Wouldn't that mean that robots are self-aware according to this definition?
Or maybe I'm missing something... like there is self-aware (recognize yourself in a mirror) and Self-Aware (realizing your place in the Universe).
PS : Poor vampires!!!
Well no shit.
I would too.
"HOLY SHIT SOMEONE MESSED WITH MY FOOD"
*quickly re-prepare food*
*lie in wait...*
"Ok, I guess no one's near my food. Safe to eat."
*go to food*
"HOLY SHIT SOMEONE MESSED WITH MY FOOD AGAIN"
That is fascinating! But to add to the other comments about this not really being a loop, it amused me to imagine the wasp is thinking exactly the same thing from its point of view.
"I can get these humans to go into an infinite loop! All I have to do is drag prey to my burrow and go inside, then they will move the prey away! And they'll repeat this as long as I keep dragging it back and going inside!"