[HN Gopher] Crows can recognize geometric regularity
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Crows can recognize geometric regularity
Author : wglb
Score : 169 points
Date : 2025-04-17 14:20 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| Science Advances paper:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt3718
| 1337biz wrote:
| 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.
| crooked-v wrote:
| It's interesting to think about how past a certain level of
| intelligence and independence it becomes less "training" and
| more "teaching".
| user982 wrote:
| I had to stop feeding the local crows. I thought I'd been
| training them to come when I called, but realized that they had
| started training me to come out by pecking my roof.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I started feeding a wounded pheasant that frequented my
| garden. I trained it to come to a specific place near the
| back door so the local squirrels didn't grab everything. The
| pheasant soon learned that it could get me to come out with
| food by going to that place and squawking loudly
| neom wrote:
| It's always me coming into these comment sections on animal
| intelligence posting shadow the rat videos, well, I love rats
| sooo much, so here I am again. They're really wonderful pets
| who are clearly very loving and extremely intelligent. Cannot
| recommend them enough, they're fantastic.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
| worldsayshi wrote:
| 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?
| kirubakaran wrote:
| Humans have so far failed all the tests that crows set up to
| measure their intelligence
| colkassad wrote:
| I was watching some crows eat some food in a parking lot
| yesterday. The first one landed next to a tiny morsel,
| investigated it a bit, then did a head bob thing while
| looking up and making what sounded like a cross between a
| hoot and a caw. Another crow swooped in about ten seconds
| later and they poked at it a bit. Then a lady walked over
| towards them, they flew away, and she dumped out her half
| eaten to-go meal in the parking spot. Too easy.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| A lot of it comes from communication. We don't know how
| intelligent some of these things are simply because we can't
| communicate with them.
|
| For apes and gorillas we can communicate. We've taught them
| sign language so we know hands down in terms of language we
| beat them. But for dolphins and octopi, we just don't really
| know.
| smcl wrote:
| We have not taught apes sign language. They can learn and
| form crude signs and use them to respond to stimuli or for
| rewards (wanting an orange, for example) but they're not
| meaningfully communicating. It'd be like me claiming I taught
| my dog English because he can press the little button that
| plays a sound of me saying "biscuit!" when he wants a treat
| (which you have to take away from him because he will just
| mash it, since dogs want dog biscuits).
| Loughla wrote:
| Isn't that what communication is?
| AIPedant wrote:
| In a squishy philosophical sense, I think LLMs are doomed
| to hallucination/confabulation because we're making
| systems that use language and hoping they figure out the
| basics of communication. That certainly is not how it
| works in humans:
|
| > Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to
| boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my
| infancy? My infancy did not go away (for where would it
| go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no
| longer an infant who could not speak, but now a
| chattering boy. I remember this, and I have since
| observed how I learned to speak. My elders did not teach
| me words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward.
| But I myself, when I was unable to communicate all I
| wished to say to whomever I wished by means of
| whimperings and grunts and various gestures of my limbs
| (which I used to reinforce my demands), I myself repeated
| the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind which
| thou, O my God, hadst given me. When they called some
| thing by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw
| it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate
| was called by the name they then uttered. And what they
| meant was made plain by the gestures of their bodies, by
| a kind of natural language, common to all nations, which
| expresses itself through changes of countenance, glances
| of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a
| disposition and attitude--either to seek or to possess,
| to reject or to avoid. So it was that by frequently
| hearing words, in different phrases, I gradually
| identified the objects which the words stood for and,
| having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, I was
| thereby able to express my will. Thus I exchanged with
| those about me the verbal signs by which we express our
| wishes and advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of
| human life, depending all the while upon the authority of
| my parents and the behest of my elders.
|
| (From the Confessions of St. Augustine)
| dpig_ wrote:
| In the sense that my cat communicates by meowing at me
| when it's dinner time, sure. But so far I don't think
| apes are signing about remembered events, future plans,
| or descriptions of non-immediate reality.
| smcl wrote:
| Maybe, but then my dog also communicates with me via his
| "biscuit" button so mere "communication" isn't a
| particularly high bar. I was disputing the "we've taught
| them sign language" part - because we haven't, we've
| taught them signs and they try to use some of them. That
| is impressive and interesting but we shouldn't oversell
| it
| throwaway75471 wrote:
| I know a dog that jumps on a door to indicate that she
| wants to go out in the big backyard.
|
| Yesterday she did the same, but didn't want to use that
| exit when I opened the door, but went to another door and
| looked at me with a clear expectation that she wanted to
| use the smaller backyard instead.
|
| That is a relatively advanced form of communication to me.
| She combined the "let me out" signal and indicated which
| backyard to use. The way she looked at me was also a form
| of communication.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think it's hard to define what meaningful communication
| is, exactly. By your standards, anybody who has worked a
| cash register would argue that a notable percentage of
| customers don't and perhaps can't meaningfully communicate.
| domofutu wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675829
| djmips wrote:
| 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!
| colkassad wrote:
| I love crows so much. I had some in my backyard that I would
| give stuff too a lot. When I would leave in the morning for
| work, they would perch on my gutters and make clucking sounds
| while looking down at me. I'd wave and be on my way.
| brewtide wrote:
| We have been very welcoming to the crows in our backyard and
| they now hang out with the chickens and ducks when they get
| leftovers / table scrapes.
|
| Now they are arriving slightly before the hawks and other
| predators and scaring them off.
|
| If you see crows randomly arrive, and look around, there is
| almost always a circling bird in the sky.
|
| It's super cool.
| djmips wrote:
| I made a terrible video of the event.
|
| https://youtu.be/EnFAW-ZxAQ0
| jonah wrote:
| They started washing their food in my bird bath like that. I
| had to put a stop to it once they started soaking dead rodents
| and things like that. A) gross, B) they don't need soaking. (:
| hbbio wrote:
| Crows soak all their food in our (sorry, their) swimming
| pool! Sadly, that includes rodents too. I wonder if it is
| because of the chlorine that could potentially "clean" the
| food, or if they want to wash out sand, etc.
|
| Been careful not to yell or approach abruptly and they
| definitely learn to recognize our faces, since we can get
| pretty close to them now.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Your second paragraph seems at odds with the perceived
| goals in the first.
| hbbio wrote:
| Indeed, that's not clear... was trying to teach no
| rodents!
| yard2010 wrote:
| Imagine the parallel universe in which other species see
| humans preserving food in vinegar writing about it..
| "that's my bathtub please don't put any cucumber in it"
| asmor wrote:
| They've been known to both wash the salt off french fries and
| dip chicken nuggets in sauce packs.
|
| Anyone who's ever argued that you shouldn't feed crows because
| it interferes with nature hasn't figured out that crows already
| adopted to urban human-inhabited environments, and feeding them
| quality food (cat kibble is cheap and works) is very much a net
| positive. If you see crows with white feathers, that's
| malnutrition, and you should give them something good to eat.
| wpietri wrote:
| I can also recommend bulk roasted unsalted peanuts. They have
| some advantages: they're cheap, they don't crumble, so you
| can always have a few in your coat pocket, and they take some
| work from the crows. They'll enjoy the challenge, and you'll
| enjoy watching.
|
| I once lived in territory of some ravens, and it was a deep
| pleasure to gradually become friends with one. It took maybe
| a year of consistent effort, but eventually he'd come hang
| out with me outdoors. I would say bits of Poe's "The Raven"
| to him, and when his turn came he'd respond with soft,
| friendly mutterings. He especially liked to visit when we'd
| grill and eat outdoors, as there was nothing he liked better
| than some some bone with bits of meat and gristle left on it.
| asmor wrote:
| Cashews are also great if you want to treat them. But we
| always bring kibble because most kibble is designed to be
| usable as a "sole" food covering a lot of nutritional needs
| at once. Extra points if you bring water and a flat bowl,
| they love to soften it up.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if that crow's got a whole routine
| down: grab snack > hydrate snack > enjoy snack > judge the dog
| for drinking from its prep station
| cdplayer96 wrote:
| What's the legality on training an army of crows to collect loose
| change around the city for me?
| MisterTea wrote:
| Define "loose".
|
| Edit, to add: years ago a lot of people kept pigeons in rooftop
| coops around NYC. As a kid there was an older guy near by who
| you'd see on his roof waving around a cloth that sort of
| directed the birds as they flew in a big flock. Now I'm
| imagining that but a flock of crows bringing back loot to some
| gangster on a rooftop.
| gyomu wrote:
| As long as you report your earnings to the IRS, you should be
| good.
|
| I guess you also need to make sure whether the crows are
| properly classified as employees or independent contractors.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If the crows' money is your money, would it also make you
| responsible for anything these crows do while collecting it ?
| perihelions wrote:
| Not great. You'd be an accomplice to a murder.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I always thought these plurals were just crazy, and felt so
| relieved to see decent researcher explaining them as
| potential jokes that ended up catching on and staying for
| centuries afterwards.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5rcbUqiZKI
| asmor wrote:
| This is a real thing with cigarette butts. You just need to set
| up a vending machine where the crows can "redeem" their trash
| for treats and they'll even teach each other about it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I recall the story, and the attention the author received.
|
| I can imagine this working, but digging into it at the time,
| there was no validation it worked at all. I couldn't get
| videos of it working, or even a cogent response from the
| author.
|
| One of the things people seem to miss, is that bring
| intelligent doesn't mean domesticated. Or that an animal
| domesticates well.
|
| Crows can understand a great deal, but does that mean they
| care to do your bidding? Even for treats?
|
| Take a look at the differences between cats and dogs. You can
| train cats, but often they barely care. Dogs are, however,
| far easier to train.
|
| Likely a difference in external validation.
|
| And after all, what is true value to a crow? City crows seem
| to have an easy time of it. I don't think they go hungry, and
| there is lots of free tasty food.
|
| So why would they care?
| asmor wrote:
| Crows have surprisingly diverse taste and are capable of
| delaying gratification. We feed peanuts, kibble and
| cashews, and of those the cashews are considered so
| delicious, that some crows will refuse other food in hopes
| that we'll hand out cashews.
|
| It's pretty cute how disappointed they can look when they
| realize you _just_ threw a peanut.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| ISTR a study where someone trained crows to retrieve street
| garbage. It stopped working because the peanuts or similar they
| were using to pay the crows were less valuable to them than the
| discarded pizzas etc they were supposed to be bringing back
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| i remember a similar project that used crows to pick up
| cigarette butts, don't know what happened of it though
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/swedish-.
| ..
| almosthere wrote:
| They can identify a worm from 300 feet, why would they not be
| able to do that.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I had a similar thought. Birds are extremely visual animals.
| They should be good at noticing changes in patterns and such.
|
| It might seem remarkable that they can do this in a structured
| setting like humans do, but the more I learn about animals...
| The less remarkable I think this kind of behaviour is.
| alganet wrote:
| I was discussing the matter of sense with some pelicans once
| and they told me they are more smell-oriented than visual.
| xandrius wrote:
| There might be lots of things going on there: colour, depth,
| pattern matching.
|
| This one shows that they can distinguish shapes even slightly
| different from another. I think it is still significant and
| interesting.
| andoando wrote:
| Pattern matching can recognize shapes
| alexfromapex wrote:
| They are also great at recognizing when I'm trying to plant grass
| seed in my lawn
| countWSS wrote:
| Does the idea that "only humans can recognize shapes" sounds
| ridicolously outdated? Its like "Science confirms animals feel
| pain".
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I assume the subtext of this research is not that human are
| special, and more that each specific claim towards each species
| of animal needs exploration and confirmation.
|
| And it genuinely takes a lot of time when dealing with
| reasonably complex animals.
|
| It reminds me of the research on cinereous tits, where the
| researcher had to spend like half a year at a time to validate
| a given chant matches a given word.
| perching_aix wrote:
| For better or for worse an idea _sounding (ridiculously)
| outdated_ doesn 't exactly make for a good argument, which
| becomes an issue when you need one.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given the ways of the current US administration, not so sure if
| that is even something open to discussion.
| xandrius wrote:
| Why does everything need to devolve into a discussion or
| comment about US politics? Not everyone cares that much about
| it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because of the ways it influence modern life, and
| technology choices.
|
| Those that don't care will eventually find themselves on a
| situation where they will care, by then it will be too
| late.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > because of the ways it X
|
| Because of the ways _the benefactors want us to think it_
| X
|
| It really doesn't matter as much as the hysteria around
| it. Maybe the hysteria is 0.0001% accurate and that's
| generous. This is true for any political tribe, politics
| and political messaging in general.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Whatever your feelings on the current US administration,
| no reasonable person could deny that it's having
| significant effects worldwide.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| I care, but mostly about my country, then my continent,
| and only them I'm roughly aware of things happening in
| other large countries (Russia, China, the US). I still
| don't see why comment about the US administration is
| relevant here.
|
| The University of Tubingen is in Germany.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It isn't as if European countries are free of such
| problems, with similar minded parties, and since you
| mention Germany, AfD keeps increasing their size.
| xandrius wrote:
| It does but one has to hold a belief for it to be eventually
| confirmed or denied.
|
| Many people historically and presently see themselves as the
| pinnacle of a godly creation, so they put humans above
| everything and anything, meaning that most perspectives to
| validate or not are about how unique we are. It might be
| annoying or backwards but at least there are people out there
| still willing to chip at it, one study at a time.
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| The interesting part of this research is that baboons, while
| evolutionary closer to humans, fail to perform this task.
|
| So scientists were thinking "hmm, maybe perception of geometric
| regularity is a unique skill to homo sapiens?". It turned out
| that crows can tell a square from trapezoids, too.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Did they tested the baboons eyesight ?
| TomMasz wrote:
| Specieism in science goes _way_ back. The funny thing is,
| people who live closer to nature and birds and animals have
| known about animal intelligence for millennia. But they were
| "primitives" who couldn't possibly have more knowledge than
| learned white people.
|
| And crows? Humans have been battling crows since the beginning
| of agriculture. It takes some serious effort to crow-proof
| everything on a farm.
| thethirdone wrote:
| The study is testing a very specific type of "recognizing
| shapes"; which the title of the article calls "geometric
| regularity". The "background stimuli" are shapes that crows
| would be expected to be able to distinguish, and are used to
| train the crows on the task. Whereas the "probe stimuli" are
| the actual experiment.
|
| As a sibling indicated baboons can not distinguish these shapes
| easily. Additionally, rather than a binary "crows can recognize
| shapes" the study shows how well crows process the shapes. One
| of the graphs in the paper, but not the article shows that two
| different crows have a similarly hard time with the rhombus.
|
| In other studies, this same test was applied to humans to find
| that it is a fairly innate skill rather than developed by doing
| geometry in school.
| andoando wrote:
| Id bet so can dogs and every other animal with eyes. Its a matter
| of interest in learning to do distinguish.
| sayamqazi wrote:
| 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.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Goats are way smarter than people think. Once they get curious
| about something, they're relentless
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Goats are the G.O.A.T
| shultays wrote:
| My cat learned to jump and grab the door handles to open doors.
| It was escaping the house that way. I had to lock the door
| while I am at home so he doesn't escape. After some tries and
| seeing that it is no longer working, he forgot/gave up at doing
| it.
| wpietri wrote:
| Totally. I've been reading a bunch of stuff related to
| philosophy of mind lately, and especially the early stuff just
| assumes this big gap between humans and animals. I think a big
| factor here is humans wanting to feel special, so another way
| to look at it is human intelligence being overrated.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| 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's like they're not
| just reacting - they're thinking.
| metalman wrote:
| 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
| NanoYohaneTSU wrote:
| Yes you can train animals to do things. Big news, has this been
| reported to the media?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Crows are sneaky bastards. I often put out leftover meat bits
| around the window, so it wouldn't rot in the bin.
|
| 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'm at home. If they see I'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.
|
| If you ignore them for too long or don't have any leftover cheese
| or meat for them they come over, pull out the fresh plants from
| the ground and leave. :D
| Terretta wrote:
| In _Children of Memory_ , by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the corvid mind
| is a plot device, particularly their approach to recognition of
| novelty, organization into memories/archives, and problem solving
| by combining those.
|
| The book is a sequel, of sorts, to _Children of Time_ and
| _Children of Ruin_ , and they should be read in sequence.
|
| All three books grapple with "what is intelligence?" by using
| approximately familiar devices to land definitions that might
| otherwise be too alien.
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