Being another Excerpt in the Ongoing Spectacle that is The Beowulf Effect: Fossils, Evolution and the Human Condition, a book currently being written for the University of Chicago Press and is now more than a month overdue. But I am near the end, now, so while you’re waiting here’s a little something on the intelligence of crows.
The cleverness of crows is proverbial. Everyone must have seen, by now, videos showing how crows leave nuts in roads, waiting for them to be cracked by the wheels of passing traffic – and the trick of those especially clever crows that leave nuts on pedestrian crossings, allowing the crows to retrieve the spoils without getting run over. In her lab, Nicky Clayton of the University of Cambridge showed me a video showing how, when a crow is confronted with a morsel floating in a beaker of water but too deep for it to reach, the bird will use stones nearby to displace the water, raising the morsel to the surface and allowing it to be reached. To do this, the crow had to be able to appreciate the various properties of materials, such that the food scrap floated, even when stones were thrown in the water; that stones would fall to the bottom; that stones displaced the water (equivalent to Archimedes’ ‘Eureka’ moment); that the water would rise up the beaker, carrying the morsel of food. Not only that, the bird would have had some concept of itself throwing the stones into the water to achieve the desired outcome.
To me, the most remarkable fact about crows is that theirs is a kind of intelligence that we can recognize — the calculation and the craftiness are things we see in ourselves. If this is true, it is remarkable, because crows and humans have brains that evolved entirely separately, along completely distinct pathways. The common ancestor of crows and humans was some kind of reptile that lived more than 250 million years ago, and would not have enough brains to write home about. As a result, the human brain – and that of other mammals such as primates, dogs, whales and horses and so on – is made entirely differently from that of crows.
This is an important insight in the context of this book because, once grasped, it shoots a huge hole in the idea that what we think of as the human mind must necessarily have evolved from earlier hominins simply by virtue of the fact that they were hominins, and had an evolutionary heritage that would have demanded progressive cognitive improvement in that lineage alone. It forces us to look at what we and crows have in common, to the exclusion of apes – and, from that, helps us understand the evolution of intelligence in general terms, not just in our own evolutionary lineage. All such similarities must necessarily be concerned with behaviour rather than anatomy, as human brains and crow brains are wired differently, and crows don’t have the hand-eye coordination popularly thought of as having been instrumental in the evolution of the human mind.
What humans and crows (and many other birds) have in common is an active social life. Unlike apes, which are solitary or live in small groups, humans and birds tend to live together in large groups in which relatives of various ages mix together with less familiar individuals. They tend to learn from one another, but they are also competitive. Human and bird societies are cohesive and complex, and prone a certain amount of internal discord and deceit. There’s is no doubt that the minds of crows are not only comparable in capability with those of humans, and have much the same flavor, for all that crows have no language, no hands, and brains the size of berries. A short visit to Clayton’s lab should dispel any notion that intelligence is necessarily all about brain size or hand-eye coordination. That we can recognise the same phenomena in creatures as distantly related to us as crows, suggests that what we think of as intelligence might have less to do with the physical structure of brains in isolation, but in the complexities of social relationships quite irrespective of form. If we find intelligent aliens, we’ll recognise them, too. They’ll behave just like we do.
You had me worried – it’s good to see your light still beaming bright.
I don’t quite get your stance – just how far down the line do you go making comparison between human and non-human intelligence. – Do you merely concede that animals have intelligence – are quite intelligent – or even as intelligent as me. (Comments on the last point to be in a sealed envelope.)
Of course it’s back to teleology. – On what scale do we measure intelligence? – Sort of – intelligent ‘in order’ to do, or be, what. – If the aim of ‘natural’ intelligence is ‘to be in balance with environment’, then we are a particularly unintelligent animal. – I will try to explain.
In the beginning was the word – so it is written. – Surely in the beginning was the picture.
Man first ‘saw’ a bear and ran. – Surely he did not stand and say, ‘Mmm – now there’s a fine example of the species Ursus Arctos advancing toward me with erect posture ouch that hurts.’
Words fill the ‘space’ between see and do – between sensory input and physical reaction. – In hominids that space seems ever increasing – between instinctive action and thoughtful behaviour – stretching so far as to ponder the imponderable.
As a result, from somewhere between ‘Aagh – big teeth – run’ – and ‘Tolstoy’s War and Peace’, has come the less than well thought out idea that we are not animals at all. – This allied to the thought, ‘I think therefore I am clever but animals don’t think.’
This thinking has led us all the way to the Box-ticker’s Bible. – Is it big or small animal – hairy or feathered – claws or hoofs – big teeth or little – is it advancing or standing still? – If you answer ‘a’ to more than 6 of these 5 questions, go to page 16 – Section b.
Research has shown there is a momentary time lapse between thinking a thought, and knowing we have thought it. – This gap is interpreted as a survival mechanism – allowing time for a quick re-think before taking action.
I play ‘blue-grass’ banjo. After long hours thinking thumb finger thumb finger finger thumb finger, one day my hand did it automatically without me thinking. – It became instinctive. – Only then could I play unthinkingly fast – my hand ignoring the ‘brain gap’ between thought and knowing the thought.
At this point I feel a scientific reference is appropriate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKdswTJ2vY
The brain is not an isolated mechanism – no more than bipedality is an isolated mechanism – as you pointed out in ‘Excerptation’: “there can be no simple relationship between a proposed cause and a proposed effect. The consequence of one change has an impact on many other traits or adaptations, until the whole body is affected.”
I loosely see the brain as a neural transport network hub – perhaps more a shipping transport network, where weather forecasting and observation of the moon, to predict the tidal flow of environment, also has effect.
The brain handles all ‘imports’ then attempts ‘exports’ to suit ‘natural selection’ needs. – Use of the facility of the split second gap, determines whether a reaction is instinctive or considered. – In this we think no differently to animals at any moment.
In our past, we hominids moved from life in a picture world, through ancient Egypt, to ‘word’ based life of the modern world. – Joseph, the Pharaoh’s accountant, sat somewhere on the dividing line in his Technicolor dream coat. – We have moved away from instinctively running from the bear – to calculating profit and loss first.
The Norman Barons watched their peasants grow cabbages – taking a tithe – a tenth of the crop to fill the castle cellars. – Now we park on supermarket concrete car parks to buy our cabbages – and the powers that be collect paper promises to store in bank vaults – maybe forgetting that we cannot grow cabbages on concrete – as we move ever further from the reality of simply being an animal.
The complexity of our social relationships relies as much on our withdrawal from instinctive behaviour, whilst heading to a calculated life style and the ensuing conflict between the two behaviour patterns, as to any innate level of intelligence.
This may be the root of our depressions – and maybe why playing a musical instrument, having attained an instinctive level of play, makes for a fulfilling ‘jam session’.
I feel another scientific reference coming on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A69BertdSt4
Maybe we don’t act as wisely as we might. Maybe a surfeit of intelligence confuses our instincts. Maybe aliens might act instinctively with wisdom. – Alternatively though, perhaps we are the first meagre scratchings of life – it must have a started somewhere.
Instinctively, the King who’s battle was lost should have known he was on a hiding to nothing for want of a horseshoe nail – but he probably asked his accountant to consider the matter. – ‘Well let’s see. There’s five hundred horses on the battlefield – 4 hoofs per horse – six nails per shoe – so what’s one nail here or there in 12,000,” said the accountant, adding, ‘Have you a contingency plan?’
A friend of mine speaks nine languages fluidly and has a doctorate in paper technology. She pooh poohs the idea that I am able to converse with horses because I understand a fair bit of animal language – helped by the fact that I am an animal. – She of course absolutely denies she is an animal.
At this point I had a rather nice picture of me In wordless conversation with an 8 week old foal and a small 6yr old child – standing next to the foals mother – but it seems that pictures don’t work in ‘comments’ or I have not mastered the art.
Ho Hum – The conversation went like this.
Me to foal – “Now mate, everything’s fine – but if you kick bite or otherwise maim my friend’s granddaughter we’re all in trouble – trust me.”
Foal – “Yeh ok – got the picture.”
Another friend can converse with crows – he’s a shepherd. – He stands behind a wall making interesting crow noises (a language I have yet to learn) and the crows fly down to sit in the field in front of him. Then he shoots a few of them. He doesn’t like the fact that a crow’s favourite delicacy is lamb’s eye ball – the newer born the better – two better than one. He leaves the dead crows on the wall and the rest fly away – and seeming to understand his message, stay away till the next year. (Either crows have poor memories or lambs eyes are just irresistible.)
A farmer generally treats all animals as equal to him – with no moral high ground.
What we and crows have in common, as part of our brain-waves, is survival strategy.
Hominids current survival strategy likes to think it has taken on board a moral base – and we do dabble in the idea of morals – in between wars.
Maybe we just have a confused intellect. – Torn between instinct and considered concern.
You say: – “That we can recognise the same phenomena in creatures as distantly related to us as crows, suggests that what we think of as intelligence might have less to do with the physical structure of brains in isolation, but in the complexities of social relationships quite irrespective of form.”
Maybe the complexities of our social relationships are the result of having lost track of our animal identity.
Maybe what we think of as intelligence is just the rambling gap between the instinctive animal we are – and the intelligent creature we might think we have become.
Maybe we have yet to learn how to handle intelligence wisely.
Personally I am sure I am no different to any animal – or crow – or cabbage for that matter – part of the living portion of the universe – with my assortment of attributes and faults.
It is here where you seem to sit on the fence. – Do you revel in our equality with animals – or disbelieve it – or should I ask your axolotl?
You say: “If we find intelligent aliens, we’ll recognise them, too. They’ll behave just like we do.”’
Mmm – have mi doubts.
We are a stupid animal – taking ourselves and all life on our planet to the brink of extinction in the pursuit of gain – still mainly concerned with accountants figurings of profit and loss to burn the planet’s resources. – This suggests that we have let our portion of intellect, as adverse to instinct, get out of hand.
Cue the next scientific reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_bJFpilu8&feature=related&noredirect=1
The picture I see is clear – only clouded by the promise of words on flimsy bits of paper.
I am an animal called Man. – I live in a field called earth. – I should look after it.
Flimsy bits of paper get us neatly to the Beowulf effect as you describe it in ‘Excerpt’: “What would our view of the past be like had no copies of Beowulf survived? And what of the alternatives? For example, if we think that the library of Englisc is thin, of the native literature of England before the Anglo-Saxon invasion we know absolutely nothing at all. What would our ideas of history be like had the single remaining manuscript of Beowulf been destroyed in that fire in 1731, and what we had instead was an account of King Arthur preserved in a single fragment of Late Ancient British, a language otherwise preserved only in a few old place names?” ……. “King Alfred himself is believed to have translated some of it himself, from the original Latin. This literature is almost entirely lost, however – the few fragments that come down to us from that remote period have survived thanks only to blind chance.” ……… “As with fragile hand-written scrolls from a thousand years ago, the chances of any living creature becoming a fossil are extremely remote…” ………. “The point of this is to show not only that history turns on a hair (the outcome of events is ‘contingent’, as Stephen Jay Gould put it) but also that the our present-day view of that history is sensitively conditioned by those few and arbitrarily chosen relics that have survived the ravages of time. I call this the ‘Beowulf Effect’.”
In this you note the gap, between the Roman departure, and the time of Alfred the Great – the 200 years of the dark ages – from which the Beowulf poem survives as the only clue on paper as to what happened in that gap – that we can use only sense to interpret what ‘might’ have happened – because the necessary facts to provide a certain conclusion are not there in the gap.
However the ‘fact’ that there is a gap does tell us something. – It tells us there was no administrative centre of records of Britain between the Romans leaving and Alfred the Great – the paucity of material from Alfred’s time tells us that administration – and its associated record keeping – was not fully re-established till the time of the monastic saints’ saintly re-introduction of Latin.
The ‘Beowulf gap’ itself tells us that, in evolution terms, the species ‘Administration’ in Britain was extinct for a while – though in ‘Rome’ it survived essentially unchanged – from Romulus and Remus, to Luther and Tyndale – and persists yet in ‘Latin countries’.
The ‘Beowulf gap’ tells of two aspects of ‘Rome’. – A continuing Latin central stability – with peripheral encroaching tribal change.
However, we can only come to this supposition with knowledge of ‘before and after’ the gap. – If we had no record of Roman Britain or continental history, we might assume that both England and English began with Beowulf – and that Latin came later, with Bede or whoever.
The ‘Beowulf gap’ demonstrates that in Britain, Latin came to a halt for more than 200yrs – and at some point within that gap there was space for the start of a new species – the English language – echoing Ernst Mayr’s isolation concepts.
This tells the importance of the gap. – Without the gap, English would not be today’s common language.
In other words the gap is in fact more important to English than the Beowolf variant. – Without the gap – no Beowolf – no Englisc – or no English.
In effect, the evolution of English language has its origin in a gap.
But in Darwin’s evolution there can be no gaps. – For this reason, we use our intellect to conjure connections so that the gap disappears – using little more fact than the odd flimsy fossil.
With no gaps allowed in the evolution of language we must make a joined-up flowing continuum of language, between yesterday’s instinctive Ouch – and today’s wordy Ursus Arctos.
Of course then we will only have one ‘continuum’ language – whatever name we might put to it. – We can have no Gaelic – no Germanic – no French – no Latin – no Englisc or English.
Fact – there are gaps in the fossil record. – If we fill them we have no species and no speciation – just the one continuum of a single species called life.
If the gaps are real we must deny Darwinian joined up change. – But if the Roman departure had not created a real linguistic gap in England, we would have no English language.
Tricky isn’t it.
After 1,142 pages of language to explain this situation, Stephen Jay Gould sums it nicely in ‘The structure of Evolutionary Theory’:
“Thus with the reintroduction of internal channeling by historical constraint (based on genetic homology) into our explanatory schemes, we must ask whether saltational themes (that had been even more firmly rejected by the Darwinian synthesis) can also advance a strong case for a rehearing. My own conclusions are primarily negative (hence my parsing of this theme as a scherzo, and as the shortest movement of my analysis), but the subject clearly merits some airing (and undoubtedly holds limited validity), if only as a sign of respect for the intuition of so many fine evolutionists, throughout the history of our subject, that structural channeling – now clearly affirmed as a theme of central importance – implies a serious consideration of saltational mechanics.”
What happens in the gaps? – Is it strictly Darwinian continuum so no gaps, or might there be a mechanism for gaps?
Stephen Jay Gould’s paragraph translated into farmer’s plain English says, – ‘I don’t know the answer – but if you can hum it I’ll try and play the tune.’
But full marks to him for that admission. – (Confucius – True knowledge – Knowing what you know and knowing you don’t know what you don’t know.)
When the fossil record is sparse, we must accept that we do not know what happened in the gaps – and a wholly Darwinian explanation is problematical.
If you are as evangelically certain as Richard Dawkins, that evolution is done and dusted and slow-joined-up change absolutely right, then so be it. – But maybe you don’t know, like Stephen Jay Gould – then please make that clear – just as Confucius would. Then your book might steer clear of flack whilst giving us much to think about. – In short do you intend your book to pose questions – or give determined answers?
I think I discovered a mechanism of saltational mechanics forty years ago. – I am not yet ready to float it publicly on the web – though I would like to discuss it with you in private somehow. – Email – letter – phone?
My mechanism has led me way beyond the present limitations of Darwinism – on to the implications of the connection between relativity and quantum theory to evolution and vice versa. (throwing a bit of Latin in there)
I like the last sentence of ‘Hawksmoor’ which goes something like – “I am as a child on the threshold of infinity.”
Scientific reference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y0_RKYM7Qk&feature=youtu.be
Wow, John – I think you get the prize for comments that are longer than the post. I’m sorry that the comment took a long time to come up. It was stuck in a moderation queue for some reason (possibly because our blog settings don’t like replies with links in them.)
Here’s the rub (I think) -
Words fill the ‘space’ between see and do – between sensory input and physical reaction. – In hominids that space seems ever increasing – between instinctive action and thoughtful behaviour – stretching so far as to ponder the imponderable.
At this point I’d recommend you go and read Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, which is all about that space between response and reaction. The bottom line is that there is no such space.
One of the problems with intelligence is knowing what it really is, such that it’s something we can measure. If we equate intelligence with (say) speed of information recall, or ability to make connections between disparate facts, and seek to measure it, are we measuring intelligence in its pure form or just a proxy for intelligence?
Some of the stuff I’ll tackle in the final chapter of the book, which is all about sentience; how having too much sentience is a bad thing; how teenagers have too much of it; that many animals are sentient; that most people get by most of the time quite happily without it.
But before that I have to discuss
why dogs like to sniff one another’s bottomslanguage.Sorry for the length. – Down to your, “book currently being written for the University of Chicago Press and is now more than a month overdue.” suggests if any comment I had might be of use, so the need for a quick comment. – I think I have mentioned my dyslexia. – Reading I love – I love words – writing I hate. I write exceptional gibberish – then have to spend tortuous hours editing to some semblance of order – then start to cut out the unnecessary. – Before the wondrous word processor arrived, the task verged on the impossible. – So three days into the process I pressed the send button. Another week and I could have had it cut to the quick.
Our culture is so imbued with thousands of years of mysticism that it is hard to cross the watershed of Darwin’s answer to our origin and how we became our current end product. – His answer in its simplest form – we are a naturally evolving animal.
My third ‘scientific reference’, you may not have clicked on it, is Rule Britannia at the Proms, written in 1740, four years before Lamarck was born. Of course Lamarck’s evolution was hardly a natural process, relying as it did on regular divine re-seedings after successive extinctions – nature’s part only concerned, by use and disuse, with developing a perfect form – particularly regarding inherited intellect passed on to more intellectual sons. – In other words man was essentially divinely created as man and was, by the time of Herbert Spencer, pretty near perfect and Britain’s pink Empire decidedly ruling. Rule Britannia admirably fitted the bill. – Despite Darwin’s best efforts it seems to me that few of us acknowledge the full implications of Darwin’s alternate thinking – for that matter, maybe nor did Darwin himself:
He said “Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms.”
The second part of his ‘tangled bank’ implies that Darwin, in his mind simply extended the origin of Lamarck’s improving forms back to one origin of all life – natural or otherwise – rather than any divine re-seeding – still with echoes of Lamarck’s successive extinctions putting paid to the less improved.
Since then, most scientific application, whilst firmly establishing the wholly natural nature of animals still manages to keep at bay the concept that we may not be much better than your average crow dog horse dolphin fruit fly or fruit bat. – And absolute amateurs in the long term survival game. (The thought has only just occurred to me – are we the shortest lived form on the planet – has any other species evolved on the planet since homo sapiens’ appearance? – Are we here today -gone tomorrow – perhaps taking the rest with us as we burn out? – An iffy thought.)
My point being – that whilst our understanding of the entire process, from simple cell to the vast array of plants and animals has certainly moved on a pace – our feelings toward understanding of our natural state – an animal in a natural world – has little changed since 1740. – as can be gathered by clicking on my scientific reference to the point.
It seems to me we overestimate our importance and our faculties.
We still apply a Rule Britannia view to evolution. – By this I mean that we have an incredibly complex view of our motives, our sensibilities – our thinking – based on our incredible ability to think. – which produces exactly the opposite of Occam’s principle on too many occasions. (particularly concerning my writing abilities)
Example – You say: …..”To do this, the crow had to be able to appreciate the various properties of materials, such that the food scrap floated, even when stones were thrown in the water; that stones would fall to the bottom; that stones displaced the water (equivalent to Archimedes’ ‘Eureka’ moment); that the water would rise up the beaker, carrying the morsel of food. Not only that, the bird would have had some concept of itself throwing the stones into the water to achieve the desired outcome.”
I would think that the crow did not understand the situation at all – but threw the stones in out of pique – frustration – or whatever. – Then found to its surprise that its tit bit was in reach. Certainly I give the bird credit for then remembering the trick, but I doubt it had any idea whatsoever that it had displaced water.
I would love to see the video of course.
Our culture has encouraged us to think like us – not like animals – and then to attempt to apply our culturally learned thinking to animal behaviour. My view is that we should try to remember how we might have thought when we first evolved to be the animal we are – before we confused ourselves with our culture.
I recall a New Scientist cover photograph of 3 geese. The featured article concerned an attempt to make a robot sheep-dog.
Having found that the robot didn’t like rough ground and that sheep moved very fast, an aircraft hanger had been hired and three geese. – Two things struck me. – The first, what’s wrong with a sheep dog – the second, at no point had the scientists considered that a sheepdog’s ‘eye’ is its most important attribute – It ‘sets’ the sheep – as we farmer’s say.
I’m now seriously digressing – I give in to my dyslexia and press the send button.
In short – the idea that we are somehow raised above animals is a very dangerous idea.
A less dislaxative person might have replied.
Replace – “To do this, the Crow had to be able ….” – with – ‘To do this, It seems the Crow might be able …..’
I would like to cntact you privately to discuss a second simple mechanism fo evolution which science appears to have missed – maybe a letter to you adressed to N could be be a start?
Quoth the Raven, “Nothing more.” .