By: Anya
Age: 11 years old
If I were to call you a bird brain how would you feel? Sad, angry, or maybe even stupid?
Well, I am looking to change that! We assume because bird's brains are small, that a lot of birds are dumb. Well, we are definitely wrong there. Some birds are actually much, much, much smarter than most people think!
For example, the chicken. When some people see chickens, they don’t really think that there is much going on inside their little heads. I mean you would never think that a chicken could recognize and remember over 100 animal and human faces or that chickens sometimes give their owner a chicken name, right and Of course, you wouldn't even believe that chickens know simple math, geometry, and even some physics! Well, those facts are true, as well as the fact that chickens have at least two dozen different vocal cheeps that have meanings! Chickens also have a low warning call for ground predators and high pitched calls for sky predators. Scientists have done many studies on chickens brains, here is one that I thought was pretty cool! This is a study done by the Silsoe Research Institute in England. The researchers programmed one button so that if a hen pecked the button it would open a feed door but, the hen had to wait 2 seconds before it opened and it got to feed for 3 seconds before the door closed again. Then the scientists added another option. If the chickens pecked at the second button they would have a longer delay [ 4 seconds longer] before getting the feed but, they would be able to eat the feed for 22 seconds instead of 3 seconds. 93 percent of the chickens chose the second button. That shows that chickens as well as possibly other birds will wait longer for a more promising reward!
So I've talked about the testing stuff, but I haven't actually talked about any personal experiences, here they are! When my favorite chicken, Mackenzie, [ don’t tell the other chickens she is my favorite] was about 4 weeks old, I taught her to cheep when I did a specific hand signal! Also, Wendy, another one of my chickens, learned how to get out of her brooder before she could fly by hopping onto the water bin platform and then hopping onto the water bin and then fluttering up to the ledge! My 5 chicks also know how to guilt trip me and my mom into taking them on walks around the back yard by staring at us and doing sweet peeps and get louder and louder!
Next example, parrots! It probably doesn't surprise you that I used parrots as an example because they are so well known as smart birds. Some species of parrots can handle about 2,000 human words. Parrots can teach other parrots some human words, which means if you were to release a parrot into the wild that had been taught human speech in captivity, then they could teach other wild parrots! Wouldn’t it be funny to have a whole jungle full of parrots squawking, "Hi! Hello, pretty bird, pretty bird!"? Alex, an African grey parrot, had a vocabulary of about 100 words as well as words he made up. The person who taught him [ a scientist named Dr. Pepperberg], compared his intelligence to that of a 5-year-old human! That may not seem like much, but for an animal's brain to be compared to a humans is extraordinary! On top of their incredible speech, parrots use their phenomenally smart brain for getting food. Meaning some parrots use tools such as pebbles to crack shells of nuts and other hard-shelled foods. Here is another example of how the parrot's mind is so extraordinary, humans are not born with the understanding that even if you can't see an object when you close your eyes it's still there. We develop that by the time we are 2 years old. However many young parrots, including one named Griffin, knew this by only 21 weeks of age! By the time Griffin was 51 weeks old, he was pretty good at the shell game.
Here are some other birds that show their smarts:
Japanese crows: They drop shelled nuts over crosswalks for cars to run over to crack the shell so they can eat the nut.
Pigeons: Some pigeons can tell if a painting is by Monet and Picasso [ Who would have thought?]!
Blue Tit [ I know, weird name]: When milk was delivered door to door, Blue Tits could tell the difference between the different milk types because of their caps. They would find the extra nourishing whole milk, take off the cap, and drink right out of the container.
To sum it up, Bird brains are actually incredible and birds should be seen as very intelligent not simple-minded! So, the next time someone calls you a birdbrain just say Thank You!!
Age: 11 years old
If I were to call you a bird brain how would you feel? Sad, angry, or maybe even stupid?
Well, I am looking to change that! We assume because bird's brains are small, that a lot of birds are dumb. Well, we are definitely wrong there. Some birds are actually much, much, much smarter than most people think!
For example, the chicken. When some people see chickens, they don’t really think that there is much going on inside their little heads. I mean you would never think that a chicken could recognize and remember over 100 animal and human faces or that chickens sometimes give their owner a chicken name, right and Of course, you wouldn't even believe that chickens know simple math, geometry, and even some physics! Well, those facts are true, as well as the fact that chickens have at least two dozen different vocal cheeps that have meanings! Chickens also have a low warning call for ground predators and high pitched calls for sky predators. Scientists have done many studies on chickens brains, here is one that I thought was pretty cool! This is a study done by the Silsoe Research Institute in England. The researchers programmed one button so that if a hen pecked the button it would open a feed door but, the hen had to wait 2 seconds before it opened and it got to feed for 3 seconds before the door closed again. Then the scientists added another option. If the chickens pecked at the second button they would have a longer delay [ 4 seconds longer] before getting the feed but, they would be able to eat the feed for 22 seconds instead of 3 seconds. 93 percent of the chickens chose the second button. That shows that chickens as well as possibly other birds will wait longer for a more promising reward!
So I've talked about the testing stuff, but I haven't actually talked about any personal experiences, here they are! When my favorite chicken, Mackenzie, [ don’t tell the other chickens she is my favorite] was about 4 weeks old, I taught her to cheep when I did a specific hand signal! Also, Wendy, another one of my chickens, learned how to get out of her brooder before she could fly by hopping onto the water bin platform and then hopping onto the water bin and then fluttering up to the ledge! My 5 chicks also know how to guilt trip me and my mom into taking them on walks around the back yard by staring at us and doing sweet peeps and get louder and louder!
Next example, parrots! It probably doesn't surprise you that I used parrots as an example because they are so well known as smart birds. Some species of parrots can handle about 2,000 human words. Parrots can teach other parrots some human words, which means if you were to release a parrot into the wild that had been taught human speech in captivity, then they could teach other wild parrots! Wouldn’t it be funny to have a whole jungle full of parrots squawking, "Hi! Hello, pretty bird, pretty bird!"? Alex, an African grey parrot, had a vocabulary of about 100 words as well as words he made up. The person who taught him [ a scientist named Dr. Pepperberg], compared his intelligence to that of a 5-year-old human! That may not seem like much, but for an animal's brain to be compared to a humans is extraordinary! On top of their incredible speech, parrots use their phenomenally smart brain for getting food. Meaning some parrots use tools such as pebbles to crack shells of nuts and other hard-shelled foods. Here is another example of how the parrot's mind is so extraordinary, humans are not born with the understanding that even if you can't see an object when you close your eyes it's still there. We develop that by the time we are 2 years old. However many young parrots, including one named Griffin, knew this by only 21 weeks of age! By the time Griffin was 51 weeks old, he was pretty good at the shell game.
Here are some other birds that show their smarts:
Japanese crows: They drop shelled nuts over crosswalks for cars to run over to crack the shell so they can eat the nut.
Pigeons: Some pigeons can tell if a painting is by Monet and Picasso [ Who would have thought?]!
Blue Tit [ I know, weird name]: When milk was delivered door to door, Blue Tits could tell the difference between the different milk types because of their caps. They would find the extra nourishing whole milk, take off the cap, and drink right out of the container.
To sum it up, Bird brains are actually incredible and birds should be seen as very intelligent not simple-minded! So, the next time someone calls you a birdbrain just say Thank You!!
