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African grey parrot outperforms children and college students:
Harvard researchers compared how 21 human adults and 21 6- to 8-year-old children stacked up against an African grey parrot named Griffin in a complex version of the classic shell game.
It worked like this: Tiny colored pom-poms were covered with cups and then shuffled, so participants had to track which object was under which cup. The experimenter then showed them a pom-pom that matched one of the same color hidden under one of the cups and asked them to point at the cup. (Griffin, of course, used his beak to point.) The participants were tested on tracking two, three, and four different-colored pom-poms. The position of the cups were swapped zero to four times for each of those combinations. Griffin and the students did 120 trials; the children did 36.
[...] So how did the parrot fare? Griffin outperformed the 6- to 8-year-olds across all levels on average, and he performed either as well as or slightly better than the 21 Harvard undergraduates on 12 of the 14 of trial types.
[...] "Think about it: Grey parrot outperforms Harvard undergrads. That's pretty freaking awesome," said Hrag Pailian, the postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who led the experiment. "We had students concentrating in engineering, pre-meds, this, that, seniors, and he just kicked their butts."
[...] To be fair, the Harvard students did manage to keep (some) of their Crimson pride intact. On the final two tests, which involved the most items and the most movement, the adults had the clear edge. Griffin's average dipped toward the children's performance — though never below it. The researchers were unable to determine the precise reason for this drop, but they believe it has something to do with the way human intelligence works (arguably making the Harvard students' victory a matter of performance enhancement of the genetic variety).
Journal Reference:
Hrag Pailian, Susan E. Carey, Justin Halberda, et al. Age and Species Comparisons of Visual Mental Manipulation Ability as Evidence for its Development and Evolution [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-64666-1)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 21 2020, @03:32PM (6 children)
I agree with a lot of the snark, not least regarding the average quality of Ivy League students, and their motivation to perform well on a test like this.
On a serious note, birds are seriously smart critters. Their size is deceptive, because they have a rather obvious incentive to stay light. An example to illustrate how serious this evolutionary pressure is: the avian genome is a fraction of the size of the genome in mammals. Imagine: reducing the weight of the DNA in your cells is evolutionarily important.
The need for compact brain is then obvious. A raven (or, in this case, a grey parrot) is as smart as a primate, even though it has a physically smaller brain and also fewer neurons. Efficiency is important, if you fly. On the other end of the scale, a whale doesn't terribly care how big and heavy its brain is - so it is several times as large as a human brain.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @04:22PM (4 children)
The DNA molecules' weight is hardly a consideration compared with things like hollow bones and having such an economical digestive track. The human genome is much smaller than some plant genomes and arguing that the size is because we move whereas plants really don't is rather silly.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:35PM (3 children)
You'd be surprised at the weight of DNA. According to one site I found, the average human has around 2.5kg of DNA. Birds cut their DNA to - sources vary - maybe 1/6 of what a mammal has. That means that an average 400g grey parrot is saving about 10g of weight. That's not insignificant for a flying creature.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @07:50PM (1 child)
Is it a matter of selection for less DNA, or just having less? Birds should be more closely related to dinosaurs than mammals, so I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't got as much bloat in the DNA.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:23PM
I don't follow that reasoning.
Birds are dinosaurs. Feathered theropod dinosaurs.
Their lineage goes back something like 160 million years which would imply they would have picked up more DNA if there was not an evolutionary advantage to keeping their DNA efficient.
I might be missing something though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:28PM
On the one hand it is, but on the other hand, it's far more likely that they just lost necessary DNA after they had already gained the ability to fly. Before being able to fly, not being able to fly isn't likely to determine whether or not they get to reproduce any more than it would in a rat.
IIRC, humans have been losing DNA as well over time. In the case of birds it's more likely to be convenient than have a causal relation. At least not compared with things like their bone structure and the design of their lungs.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:56PM
(Yes, I know, they're a domesticated species - so *humans* did that, not nature.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves