Bird Brain

After seeing the episode of Nova “Bird Brain”, I am more convinced that birds very well could be seeing the world just as we do. I’ve taken several psychology classes about humans and one experiment always pops up about delayed gratification in children. I was very interested to see that birds were put to the same experiment. They were given a piece of bread that they could swap out for some cheese but they would need to wait some time to be able to swap. These crows would very often wait and sometimes even had some techniques to keep themselves from The temptation. Another interesting observation is that birds are able to understand object permanence, or that their food doesn’t disappear when it is placed in a container. Birds have in the past been thought of having too small of brains for such high intelligence thinking but scientists have discovered that the concentration and density of neurons in their brains is more dense than in many mammals, allowing for learning and the use of tools as well as solving problems. The most interesting experiment to me was the “multi-access box” that had four different solutions for the bird to get its food reward in the center. Each time a bird solved it using one of the solutions, that solution was blocked off. The birds were very creative and were able to solve these problems creatively. It was an extremely interesting movie that did showcase many experiments that were able to at the very least create some evidence to birds having some intelligence.