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Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow

PLOS Media · demo · Watch on YouTube

Animals & naturePsychology & human behavior

What it is

A silent PLOS ONE video of New Caledonian crows solving Aesop's Fable puzzles by dropping objects to raise water and reach food. It shows example trials from experiments testing causal understanding of water displacement.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Used as vivid evidence of crow intelligence and animal physical reasoning in discussions of cognition.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 3 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2015, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “The reasoning ability and executive function of birds, crows in particular, is astonishing.”

    Crow demonstrating reasoning by raising water level to reach food.

    lr4444lr, 2016-03 · Recommendation · in “Why Neuroscientists Need to Study the Crow”

  2. “Crows are astoundingly intelligent.”

    Crow solving water displacement puzzle to reach food.

    danmostudco, 2019-12 · Recommendation · in “Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates”

  3. “This video is a startling verification.of the crows mental capabilities.”

    Footage verifying crows' causal reasoning with water displacement.

    boltefnovor, 2020-09 · Recommendation · in “Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: crows, animal cognition, water displacement, tool use, aesop's fable

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