Crows know how to recognize recursive structures. They can do it better than monkeys do it, that’s what it means specifically.
Crows and crows are very intelligent animals, who know how to use objects and are able to do the most esoteric feats, i.e. understand the concept 0. A recent study claims that crows are more intelligent than monkeys and comparable to a child. Crows have the ability to recognize recursive structures.
The study involves teaching subjects to recognize different symbols. Then it is taught that to get a reward you have to touch the symbols, only when they appear in a certain form. On the third pass, the shuffled symbols are presented in new ways. Understanding recursion means understanding if { ( ) } is fine, { [ ] } is fine too, while { } ( ) is not.
The same experiment was proposed two years ago to humans (adults and children) and macaques. Adults answered correctly between 60 and 90% of the time, while children stopped at 43%. Finally, the macaques 26%. The crows beat everyone with 40% correct answers. A result that borders on the human one, but the crows do not speak. The results suggest that the ability to recognize recursion is not related to language. The crows maybe do it for their singing communication that regulates the difficult social structures.
- Crows are smarter than monkeys (at least in one case) (focus.it)
