Are Birds Conscious?

-

Are Birds Conscious?



    The topic of consciousness is one with many different loose ends. Many believe that humans are the only being capable of being conscious, whilst others believe that multiple animals including ourselves are conscious, or at least semi-conscious. I am a firm believer that other animals such as crows, dolphins, octopi, and others might have the ability to be conscious. But, birds of the corvid family seem to be smarter than other birds. 



    I recently read an interesting article about testing the consciousness of a corvid bird. It's a good read, and I'll leave a link to where you can find it at the end of this post. It begins by discussing how human consciousness is associated with the cerebral cortex. Birds, on the other hand, evolved a different brain since they diverged from mammals 320 million years ago. A bird's pallium holds organizational principals close to a mammal's brain, but their brains lack a layered cerebral cortex as mammals have. Some have concluded that this means birds are not conscious.  But birds still show signs of advanced cognitive and perceptual behaviors which could suggest that they are conscious. The researchers who wrote the paper believe that the conscious experience in birds comes from the activity of the nidopallium caudolateral (NCL), and they conducted an experiment to detect the crows' internal conscious processes. 

    The researchers trained two crows to report the presence or absence of visual stimuli in a rule-based delay detection task. First, the crows were shown a visual stimulus and then were asked moments later if they saw the stimulus by showing them an additional visual cue.  The cue, however, would vary from experiment to experiment.  They were shown a red cue to ask the crows if they saw the stimulus, or shown a blue cue to ask the crows if they didn't see the stimulus.  Since the crows were only shown the original stimulus half the time, and then asked afterward using the red cue half of the time or the blue cue the other half of the time, the crows would have to think about what the red cue meant, or what the blue cue meant, and then remember if they saw the original stimulus and then place all of the events and rules together to answer the researchers' question. There was no way that the crows could have answered the researchers' questions correctly if the crows were just guessing.  The crows were answering correctly at a percentage high enough such that it was very highly unlikely that they were guessing the correct answer after so many trials.  This means the crows didn't fake or prepare a response before the stimulus.

    The researchers who performed this experiment concluded that the crows were conscious. If you want to read into it I suggest you check out the full article, which I'll link it at the end of the post. Their findings provide evidence of the origins of consciousness. To find sensory consciousness in birds and mammal implies that both inherited consciousness from their Last Common Ancestor. If this is true, it would mean that consciousness evolved at least 320 million years ago. On the other hand, consciousness could have emerged independently on the basis of evolution, on different branches of the tree of life. This hypothesis states that consciousness was not around in the stem-amniotic ancestor, but evolved later and on its own during the rise of birds, mammals, and other animals. Their findings provided evidence for the origins of consciousness, it excluded the proposition that only primates and other mammals with layered cerebral cortexes were conscious. 




    Other birds of the corvid family, such as Blue Jays have been studied playing "pranks" on other animals and even family members in a manner deliberate enough to suggest that they are able to use their consciousness to think through a problem from the point of view of another animal and how that animal would react. For example, Blue Jays can mimic predatory birds calls and have been documented mimicking an Osprey call, a Coopers Hawk's call, and many other bird calls. There are multiple videos online of Blue Jays mimicking these predatory bird calls in order to clear out a feeder, and I've even seen it myself. I had my window open and heard a Cooper's Hawk call. I took out my binoculars and tried to find where the bird was, but could not find it. I looked over to a Blue Jay in a big apple tree in my backyard and found that the calls were actually being made by the Blue Jay. I found this interesting, as they were the only bird in the tree. There's another video I saw somewhere, but I've forgotten where though. It depicted a Blue Jay acting like it was hiding a peanut or seed in a large patch of grass. Once the first Blue Jay left, another flew down and spent a while looking for the fake food. I seriously doubt that this was unintentional and that the first Blue Jay found it funny. If this is the case, then it can help prove that Blue Jays are extremely smart animals. To hide fake food for an unsuspecting bird to waste time looking for is amazing, and it shows that they could have a sense of humor, making them a very developed species. 

    So, are Blue Jays conscious? Well, that's up to you to decide. I personally believe that they are. Blue Jays are extremely smart animals as shown above. Mimicking predatory bird calls shows that they can connect the dots saying "If I make this predatory bird call, the other birds will leave the food so that I can have it to myself". This, along with the fact that they actually play "pranks" on fellow Jays and other animals can really help prove that they are actually conscious and that these aren't instinctual behaviors.

    Since its late-fall in Connecticut, almost every bird in my yard is getting ready for the long winter. I've made sure to put out high-energy suet and lots of birdseed in multiple feeders. In the future, I'll probably make a "Birds of my Backyard" post to show what birds are in my backyard with some behaviors I've found. 

    You can find the article mentioned at the beginning here, you may have to create an account to view it fully. I highly suggest you check it out! 

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1626 

    You can find multiple videos of Blue Jays mimicking predatory bird calls on youtube, but I'll link a couple down below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gmVOMEhMj8&t=14s 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZY5SaPDQpU (Blue Jay meowing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLBaChHwZ1Y 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJwzZH1P8A&t=77s



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trilobite Conga Lines

-
Image
  Trilobite Conga Lines      The trilobites were ancient Cambrian arthropods. Their fossils can be found worldwide due to how abundant they were before they went extinct. They thrived from the Cambrian Explosion, where life rapidly evolved to the Devonian era.      Trilobites were one of the most successful early animals, existing for almost 300 million years. The trilobites went extinct around 250 million years ago in the end-Permian extinction. There were many different types of trilobites spanning their 300 million year reign. Different trilobites had different lifestyles, as it is thought that some moved over the seabeds as predators, and others were filter-feeders and scavengers. Most trilobites swam and crawled for transportation, but it is thought that some could have crawled on land. Some even believe it's possible that some species of trilobites moved in herds that looked like conga lines. Trilobite Herds     As stated before, t rilobites were a diverse animal genus, with
Read more

The Canadaspis

-
Image
Canadaspis      Canadaspis was a very odd genus of anthropoid from the Cambrian Era. Today, I'm mainly focusing on Canadaspis Perfecta, but I may cover the other species in the future.  Its name means "Shield of Canada", as it had a large shield type body part that had covered its head. This shield is actually called a carapace.  Canadaspis probably used its legs to crawl on the Cambrian seafloor, scavenging plants or smaller animals. Most Canadaspis' are found in the Burgess Shale in Canada but they can be found in areas like Utah, Nevada, and China.     Canadaspis most likely used its multiple legs to stir up the sediment on the seafloor, in turn kicking up possible food and directing it into their mouth(s?). They were also likely prey for larger animals, but due to their extremely small size (roughly 47 millimeters long), they probably weren't targeted by large predators such as Anomalocaridia. A Canadaspis compared to  a 1.8-meter tall person      The Canadasp
Read more

The Ancient Herring

-
Image
What Were Knightas? The Knightia was an Eocene era fish from what is now the Green River Formation in Wyoming, USA. Knightias are most closely related to the common day Herring has an abundance of fossils. Large amounts of these fossils can be found in just a square yard of the fossiliferous rock they were fossilized in, which is known as Limestone.  An artist's reconstruction of what a Knightia may have looked like Predators and Prey Knightias were very important in the food chain, usually being eaten by different animals such as birds, snakes, and other large fish. Knightias usually ate arthropods, which were like small crustaceans, algae, and sometimes baby fish if they could fit one in their mouth.  A Knightia with a smaller fish in its mouth Anatomy Knightias belong to the same family as sardines and herrings. They had rows of dorsal and ventral scutes that ran from the back of the head to the medial fins. Knightias had heavy scales and small teeth. The si
Read more