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Why Did Consciousness Evolve? Exciting Research on Bird Brains

Anton Petrov

572,941 views

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Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about consciousness in birds
Links:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rs...
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rs...

0:00 Consciousness and birds
2:09 What is consciousness though? 3 Levels explained
4:15 Link to pain and animals
5:00 Why were birds believed to not have conscious mind?
6:00 Brain bird differences and evolution
8:05 How can we tell they're conscious? Tests and experiments
9:15 Magpie test
9:30 Pigeons and chickens!
10:50 Even ants?!
12:20 Complex behavior
13:00 Brain parts responsible for bird consciousness
14:05 What this suggests
15:55 This is an evolutionary advantage!
17:00 Conclusions

#consciousness #science #birds

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Credit:
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20 Comments

@lithhtil 9 months ago

I know this is the low tier answer scientifically speaking, but it seems pretty obvious to anyone whos ever had a pet that most animals are definitely conscious

@stargazer5784 9 months ago

12:27 There was a documentary on PBS once called 'A Murder of Crows' that dealt with their intelligence and self awareness. For over a year, a research team observed a murder, which is what a flock of crows is called, that lived in an inner city area. What was seen was astonishing. Among many things, they had learned to collect large walnuts from a city park and then land on the supports at intersections that traffic signals were attached to. They would watch the signal, and when it turned green, they would drop the nuts in front of cars so that the cars would run over them and crack them open. They watched children sliding down a hill on the sleds, and mimicked the same behavior after the children left by sliding down the same hill on their backs. What was amazing was that even though they could fly back up the hill, they chose to walk back up to the top.

@omegaman66 9 months ago

I find it fascinating that some people don't believe other animals are conscious.

@Microbex 3 months ago (edited)

I have had a crow making barking sounds to tell me that a dog was approaching us.
I give the local crows in my cemetery some peanuts on regular basis. And it was during one of the feedings that a crow looked at me and made baring sounds. It could just had grab the nuts and fly off, but it totally ignored the nuts and seemed focus on telling me that a dog was approaching us. That blew my mind completely.
I believe that it must count as a conscious behavior.

@raybrooks2429 9 months ago

Once, in my early twenties, i found a baby robin that i guess had fallen from its nest. My girlfriend and I finished raising it, and one day we took this little bird outside to introduce it to wild berries. We were inbetween two apartment buildings, and one of us noticed that a bunch of other robins had congregated above us, watching. Eventually a few of them even dropped down to ground level and got pretty close to us, while we fed the little one. It was crazy surreal. That whole experience was eye opening for me. Birds are way more intelligent than i had realized. That bird hung around that summer, every now and then he'd fly over to me and land on my shoulder. We got video of it once. It was incredible.

@avirei98 9 months ago

it bothers me how far we believe we are removed from nature.

@The-Dom 9 months ago

i just watched my 9 week old kitten's mind get blown when she saw my hand come out from under the blanket and she finally put 2 and 2 together. She looked back and forth from my hand to where she was attacking it under the blanket, her jaw dropped, then stared off into space recalling all the times she'd attacked it, mind totally blown.

@gordonmorris6359 9 months ago

Australia's male Palm Cockatoos are unique in the bird world for crafting and using tools (sticks/pods) to produce musical, rhythmic sounds.

@KathySierraVideo 9 months ago

I train horses, and herding dogs. But got the shock of my life when we got our first bird… a one ounce, tiny Pacific Parrotlet. 30+ years of animal training, but within day one “training” this tiny bird (4 months age), he learned everything I planned on training for the next many months.😮 He’s 10 now, and by far the most intelligent creature here. He also talks 🫣 which is ofc not about meaning of the words, but his associative learning is off the charts. And I swear he calls the cat just to annoy the dog. 😁 His favorite phrases are “it’s not rocket science” and, “you got this.”

@ptsdresolution9962 9 months ago

When I was younger, I used to hunt. I had permission to patrol the grounds of a privately owned mansion that was built in 17th century. On the estate was a long established Rookery. When I walked near the Rookery, without a gun, the rooks would chatter and play around with each other. If I walked past them carrying a gun, they were totally silent and I realised that they were all watching me. I had never shot at them, but I think someone had done that in the past.

@militantpacifist13 9 months ago (edited)

“There isn’t a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s a very wuzzy line, and it’s getting wuzzier all the time. We find animals doing things that we, in our own arrogance, used to think was ‘just human’.”- Jane Goodall

@Anzar2011 8 months ago

When I was a child, there was a street cat living on the roof of a garage which I could see from my home's balcony. The cat was beautiful, and I was looking at her with a lot of love, thinking that if she could come to my balcony, I would give her milk and tasty food. It was as if she heard my thoughts; she jumped more than two meters and reached my balcony. I do not need another proof that animals are not only sentient, but they are also more sentient than we are. They are more connected to nature and to other living beings than we can ever be. Anyone who owns a cat or a dog knows that they sense when we are sad and they try to comfort us.

@TreeDancingCloud 9 months ago

I have seen animals invent ways to show me things I needed to be aware of. They are not only consciously aware of their own minds, but also aware of ours.

@blueberreez 9 months ago

I love that Anton calls his viewers "Wonderful Person". Been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff lately, and that little bit of kindness is surprisingly helpful right now. His likeability really adds a lot to his channel.

@TobiasC-mg4zk 9 months ago

A friend watched two ravens grab a 5lb bag of dog food out of the back of a pickup truck parked by a pet store. They managed to get the bag across the road into the bush. That requires cooperation and planning as well as the ability to identify a source of food in a bag. Ravens are incredibly intelligent beings.

@darrenpellichino2923 9 months ago

I watched my budgie get down on the floor and play matchbox with my two young toddlers. She grabbed the car in her beak and drove it around on the floor right in the middle of them both doing the same thing. Just as natural as anything. Crows are so smart they can complete a lab test that very few animals can. Give something valuable to trade for something valuable.

@YellowZeppelin93 9 months ago

Crows actually mourn the death of other crows. That gather around the dead crow and hold a vigil.

@UnclaimedUsername 9 months ago

The problem with our ‘self-awareness’ tests is that we too often apply human criteria. Asking a dog to demonstrate self-awareness through sight is not a good test, as dogs are not primarily visual beings like humans; dogs very definitely demonstrate self-awareness through scent.