Crows can recognize geometric regularity

Does the idea that "only humans can recognize shapes" sounds ridicolously outdated? Its like "Science confirms animals feel pain".

Kind of off topic but I just got back from the park and there is a public water bowl set out for dogs and a crow was manipulating something in the water - after a time my eyebrows went up as I realized the crow was softening some dried out discarded human food to make it easy to break up and eat!

Animal's intelligence is often underrated. We used to keep goats which many wont consider problem sovlers. They had learned to open gate bolts with their mouths. The bolts I am talking about have a handle and a rod. the handle needs to be rotated then the bolt can be slided out while keeping the handle in the rotated state.

How comparable is the intelligence of crows, dolphins, octopi and non human apes? Somewhat or not at all? There seem to be a host of things that each of those can do. Can apes do all of those things and the other groups just a few things each? Is there a huge leap of separation or does the leap come between us and them? Is it in any way quantifiable?

Went down that rabbit hole of training crows to do things. Crows are such amazingly intelligent creatures. There is a whole scene of people teaching and training wild crows silly things.

They can identify a worm from 300 feet, why would they not be able to do that.

What's the legality on training an army of crows to collect loose change around the city for me?

Thinking about this more,it seems that it's not so much that crows or humans, recognise geometric shapes, but that they can, which is slightly odd and interesting, as all life on earth eveloved and thrived, without any recourse to geometry, nature famously abhoring strait lines, there bieng non to exploit in the first place. And for the species that "cant" recognise geometrical shapes, perhapsthey just reject them out of hand, as a deaper level of awareness signals danger, as the closest nature gets to geometry is in splintered and jagged shapes left from violent phenominon.

I have watched crows walk along the side of a wooden shingled building, peering up under the shingles ledge, and picking of the insect/spider egg cases that are attached there, they are very methodical, and do one continious row at a time. They also work the edge of the hyway, picking off insects injured and dazed by the traffic.While there is no direct conection to geometry with working beside the hyway, the crows do have to know that there are big insects present in large numbers, when there is also traffic(morning afternonn rush) , which wind and rain would disrupt,so still very much of a cognitive exercise

Science Advances paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1126&#x2F;sciadv.adt3718" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1126&#x2F;sciadv.adt3718</a>

In <i>Children of Memory</i>, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the corvid mind is a plot device, particularly their approach to recognition of novelty, organization into memories&#x2F;archives, and problem solving by combining those.<p>The book is a sequel, of sorts, to <i>Children of Time</i> and <i>Children of Ruin</i>, and they should be read in sequence.<p>All three books grapple with &quot;what is intelligence?&quot; by using approximately familiar devices to land definitions that might otherwise be too alien.

The fact that their performance dropped with smaller differences but still stayed well above chance makes it feel a lot like human error patterns in similar visual tasks. It&#x27;s like they&#x27;re not just reacting - they&#x27;re thinking.

They are also great at recognizing when I’m trying to plant grass seed in my lawn

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43675829">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43675829</a>

Crows are sneaky bastards. I often put out leftover meat bits around the window, so it wouldn&#x27;t rot in the bin.<p>Crows are the first that come and after some tasting, stuff their peaks with meat and leave. The fuckers sit on the top of the neighboring house and watch if I&#x27;m at home. If they see I&#x27;m roaming around they fly to the window and start marching. Marching means they walk up and down on the galvanised plate-covered ledge signaling me, that they want some treats.<p>If you ignore them for too long or don&#x27;t have any leftover cheese or meat for them they come over, pull out the fresh plants from the ground and leave. :D

Id bet so can dogs and every other animal with eyes. Its a matter of interest in learning to do distinguish.

Yes you can train animals to do things. Big news, has this been reported to the media?