We\u2019re getting murdered \u2014\u00a0by a bunch of crows.<\/p>\n
Put to a test designed to gauge good decision-making skills, the feathered fauna raced past humans, scientists said.<\/p>\n
These birdbrainiacs move \u201cin the fast lane,\u201d study co-author\u00a0Andreas Nieder, an animal physiologist at the University of T\u00fcbingen in Germany, told the\u00a0Transmitter, Smithsonian reported.<\/a><\/p>\n A crow pecks at a screen during an experiment to gauge its decision-making skills. University of T\u00fcbingen<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that members of the corvid family \u2014 comprised of jays, ravens, jackdaws and more \u2014 possess remarkable caw-gnitive abilities.<\/p>\n In the past, ravens have been observed planning for the future<\/a>, while carrion crows have been known to use tools with remarkable precision.<\/a><\/p>\n What\u2019s surprising is that in some instances, their mental prowess could exceed our own.<\/p>\n To determine just how smart crows are, Nieder and his colleague Philipp Schmidbauer subjected two male carrion crows named Iggy and Lenny to a special screen test.<\/p>\n They sat in front of a touch monitor displaying a cluster of dots, some of which moved either left or right while other decoy dots shifted randomly to distract them, a statement<\/a> released by the university explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bigger implication is that a brain does not need a mammalian neocortex to perform sophisticated computations,\u201d Nieder said. Patricia Thomas \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n When the movement started, the crows pecked either the left or right side of the screen as fast as possible to identify the corresponding specks\u2019 trajectory. Upon guessing correctly, they\u2019d be rewarded with a juicy mealworm.<\/p>\n To ensure accuracy, the participants performed the tasks thousands of times before data was collected. While humans \u2014\u00a0and monkeys, too \u2014 had performed the dot exam before, this marked the first time crows had been tested in this way.<\/p>\n The researchers found that the pair displayed \u201cunprecedented speed\u201d with each choice taking approximately 235 milliseconds on average. That was roughly \u201ctwice as fast\u201d as the times logged by their human and simian counterparts.<\/p>\n Crows\u2019 decision making abilities could be an adaptation to their harsh environment, where light-speed judgments can be the difference between life and death. Mel Stoutsenberger \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n Most impressively, the not-so-flighty featherbags made these light-speed decisions without sacrificing accuracy, notably making correct calls 100% of the time when the motion patterns were clear.<\/p>\n Of course, the larger question is how such a comparatively small-brained creature makes these computations so quickly.<\/p>\n To determine this, the bird\u2019s noodles were implanted with electrodes so researchers could record activity from 248 neurons in the\u00a0nidopallium caudolaterale\u00a0(NCL) \u2014 the area of the bird\u2019s brain that performs roughly the same function as the prefrontal cortex in primates, Livescience reported.<\/a> <\/p>\n Using this mind-reading technique, researchers managed to predict the crows\u2019 eventual decision 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared, or roughly 170 milliseconds before they made their selection.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the findings suggest that crows use similar decision-making abilities to primates. <\/p>\n \u201cThe bigger implication is that a brain does not need a mammalian neocortex to perform sophisticated computations,\u201d Nieder said.<\/p>\n Why do crows need to make decisions so lickety-split? <\/p>\n It could have to do with the demands of the avians\u2019 lifestyle, where rapid visual processing and motor response are essential for navigating the complexities of flight, rapid beak movement and predator evasion, the experts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re getting murdered \u2014\u00a0by a bunch of crows. 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