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epiphiny43 -> RE: Crow's smarter than most people I know (4/3/2013 4:08:29 AM)
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Crows as omnivores will scavenge. Being as smart and well sighted as their lifestyle requires, most road kill is consumed a lot faster than our food makes it through the slaughterhouses. In cattle country, those with a certain taste pick a side of beef at the slaughter house and have it hung in the cool room. "Call me when it's grey." which is when molds and fungus have changed the meat to a less tough 'material'. If there were an issue with what crows eat, there certainly wouldn't be so many surviving crows. Crows die of age, predators and hunting/varmint control(Poison and traps). Otherwise, very long lived. Birds, like most predators, process food much faster than humans. In and out in 3 hours? Not the same opportunity for the wrong bacteria to cause problems as humans who take 3 to 5 days for most 'nutrition' to pass through the digestive system.
Filthy is relative. Few animals have mouths with the germ count of humans. (mostly because we Touch everything, then touch our mouths, and live in huge communities of others who do the same that we shake hands with. Now There is filthy!) Ask any ER worker. Human bites infect far faster and more dangerously than most N.American animal bites, including dogs, who are known to enjoy scat for the minerals and salts missing in their usual diet. Other than the pure scavengers, many birds are cleaner than most wildlife (and us) as they live in trees by choice and necessity. Though being so warm bodied, w/ high metabolism and wide mobility, they have the highest parasitic problems of land animals. Happily most of their parasites dislike humans as cold and inhospitably bare hosts.
The Mariana's Crow so far seems the smartest of birds by one measure. One has been observed modifying tools for purpose and of using two interacting tools to accomplish goals (The experiment in the video). Trimming twigs and wires to shape and length to reach otherwise out of reach food or objects was considered a human only trait, till seen with one experimental crow. IIRC, that bird taught others the tricks. All larger primates find and use tools, the crow 'building' appropriate tools is a step above. Which doesn't mean chimps don't learn to modify natural objects for purpose. More animals are being found to be tool users all the time.
Language has also been found to be accomplished by numerous animals, chimps, gorilla and parrots in particular. Alex (African Congo Grey) with a vocabulary of over 350 words, constructed new phrases from words he'd been taught with new meanings and mastered a concept the Greeks didn't which the Arabs taught to the Christians, Zero. (Null sets) "Alex, how many?" Alex: "None!" (and on up to 5 or 6?) No zero in Roman numbers! AFAWK, Arabian Muslim mathematicians invented the concept of a number for 'nothing'. Europeans certainly didn't invent it.
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