Trying to watch TED talks is like standing in front of a firehose. I like it when people point me to a particularly interesting one, and this 10 minute one by Joshua Klein on crows is fascinating:

Among the more startling things in the talk:

Crows can figure out a problem and create a tool to surmount it. An example given is crows in a particular area dropping nuts onto roads so traffic will crack them, then waiting for the green pedestrian signal before going to pick up the bits. Apparently, every pedestrian crossing there now regularly has crows at the side waiting to go pick up a meal.

Crows learn from each other. This means that in the most basic sense, they have cultures; bodies of shared motives, knowledge, and actions. Joshua set out to make a device that trained them to perform a simple task. As he says:

We can find ways to interact with other species that don’t involve exterminating them.

(Via Boing Boing, of course)

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 10:21 and is filed under Culture, Design, Environment, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.