Nov. 15/2017

Feature:

Ravens Plan for the Future — Just Like Humans

“Ravens surprised researchers with something that was thought to be unique to only humans & other great apes: the ability to plan ahead.

Ravens have previously been found to store food to eat later, but it wasn’t considered evidence of planning. Scientists thought they were wired to do it on instinct, so Can Kabadayi and Mathias Osvath from the Department of Cognitive Science at Lund University in Sweden set out to see if they could complete tasks that involved planning ahead.

They set up a series of experiments for 5 ravens...The tests involved seeing whether they could plan ahead for events that were 15 minutes ahead, or as long as 17 hours ahead, & were also designed to see if ravens would use self-control to get a better reward later, instead of giving in to immediate gratification.

The ravens were taught to use a tool to open a box that contained a reward. Once they had that down, they were then offered their choice of a tool, which was placed among “distractor” objects, before they were presented with the box 15 minutes later. They successfully chose the tool & opened the box 86% of the time, & similar results were found when the box was presented 17 hours later.

Their findings, which were just published in Science show ravens outperformed chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, & even human children, on similar tests.

In other tests, ravens were presented with a token they could use to trade for something better at a later time. In this case, they opted to wait for something better 90% of the time.

‘To be able to solve tasks like these, one needs a collection of cognitive abilities working in concert, such as inhibitory skills & different forms of memory. That ravens show similar functions, & combine them in ways similar to apes, despite a last common ancestor as far back as 320 million years ago, suggests that evolution likes to re-run good productions,’ said Osvath.

...the findings here now add to a growing body of research surrounding non-human animal intelligence that will hopefully help grow our appreciation & respect for them.

‘One of (our) most interesting results is that intelligence is not restricted to human lineage,’ said Kabadayi. ‘Maybe we should be more humble in looking at ourselves & we should appreciate that there are other ways toward higher cognition.’”

 Alicia Graef

July 14/ 2017

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Memorial

Dusty, one of my mother's beloved cats, recently passed away at the age of 10. He will be missed. RIP