>Science, Vol 306, Issue 5703, 1903-1907 , 10 December 2004 
>
Peter quotes:

>The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and
>Apes 
>
>Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton 
>Discussions of the evolution of intelligence have focused on monkeys and apes
>because of their close evolutionary relationship to humans. Other
>large-brained social animals, such as corvids, also understand their physical
>and social worlds. Here we review recent studies of tool manufacture, mental
>time travel, and social cognition in corvids, and suggest that complex
>cognition depends on a "tool kit" consisting of causal reasoning,
>flexibility, imagination, and prospection. Because corvids and apes share
>these cognitive tools, we argue that complex cognitive abilities evolved
>multiple times in distantly related species with vastly different brain
>structures in order to solve similar socioecological problems.

Perhaps the most important moral in this work is that it greatly highlights the
danger of overly implying adaptive value in one particular structure,
especially if it's the only example that you either have or much care to study.

For a great long time now, people have correlated the number and depth of the
convolutions in the mammalian neocortex with the "intelligence"
of the species.
That actually may be true, but it's also just as obvious that it isn't the
complete story.

For the last several decades, researchers such as Irene Pepperberg have been
demonstrating at the intelligence of birds rivals that of mammals, and yet
there are no convolutions in the neocortex of birds -- simply because they
don't have a neocortex. Birds, being much more closely related to reptiles than
mammals, lack the entire mammalian neocortical structure.

Clearly, the perceptual, linguistic and analytical intelligence of birds has
been built elsewhere in the CNS, and we're not at all sure where.

Wirt Atmar
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