Dennis and all,

Though I currently work in toxicology, original training was in
behavioral neuroscience. As a comparison to bird brain function, the
human brain may be intrepreted to have up to 30% of cortical function
devoted to optical information processing. It has taken much too long
for my colleagues to address "just what has evolution selected the brain
to do?" Evaluating a creature's life history and its environmental
challenges is a very good starting point. The brain of higher animals is
the most complex structure known, and we barely have a handle on the
functions of simple brains such as those found in marine invertebrates.

Perhaps, the term "efficient" or notions of "efficiency" in brain
function are inappropriate frameworks in which to cast cross-species
comparisons. The sense of smell in most modern primates is fairly keen,
but no where near that of canines. Olfactory structures were more
dominant in our distant ancestors, but we and many other primates are
also visual creatures as are the birds. We are designed to see different
things well for different reasons.

I must confess that I get a profound sense of awe when I look at some of the
cetacean brains, and compare them in complexity with ours. What were they
designed to do with their acoustic sense and extraordinary, patterned noises
and ponder? And if the parrots can develop a facility with
our language, what do they communicate with each other??? Boggles my puny
little brain!!!

Maureen E. Ellis, Dept of Environmental Health, Roos 1 Toxicology Group,
U of WA, Seattle, WA, 98195. me2 at u.washington.edu

ON PREVIOUS DAYS EVERYONE WROTE THE FOLLOWING STUFF...........

On Fri, 23 Jun 1995, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> Here's another fascinating forward from the dinosaur list! To avoid
> confusion, remember that even though my name and address are at the very
> end of the message, I had nothing to do with it. Dennis
>
> >Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 07:56:31 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: "D. Victor" <dvictor at u.washington.edu>
> >To: Dennis Paulson <dpaulson at ups.edu>
> >Subject: Bird brains (fwd)
> >
> >---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 07:09:35 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: Harold Fuller <halfu at u.washington.edu>
> >To: Dan Victor <dvictor at u.washington.edu>
> >Subject: Bird brains (fwd)
> >
> >---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 21:52:55 -0400
> >From: VanKathy at aol.com
> >To: Multiple recipients of list <dinosaur at lepomis.psych.upenn.edu>
> >Subject: Bird brains
> >
> >Please forgive me if you have already received this lengthy post, but I think
> >that I made a mistakenly failed to mail it to all on this list. I wrote this
> >as a response to Steve9120 and M. Rowe concerning the intelligence of crows
> >and birds and dinosaurs in general. I am very interested in your responses
> >since I pose questions well outside of my field of expertise. Here is the
> >post:
> >
> >One more example of the intelligence of crows (or perhaps ravens -- it was
> >many years ago when I read this) involves an experiment somewhat similar to
> >what M. Rowe described. A bird was placed in an area where the only water
> >available was in a tube so narrow that only the bird's beak could fit inside.
> > Furthermore, the water level was set so that it lay just beyond the bird's
> >reach. In a brilliant solution that probably is beyond many human's problem
> >solving abilities, the bird dropped pebbles into the water until the water
> >was displaced enough for it to reach!
> >
> >As far as other birds are concerned, I have heard remarkable things about
> >African Grey Parrots. I read of one bird with a vocabulary of hundreds of
> >words that, it was claimed, idependently developed the ability to construct
> >simple two word sentences (i.e. the bird would say "Go gym" -- a request to
> >go to the gym for play after being told what "go" meant and the association
> >of "gym" with the gym and play). The bird could also identify not only
> >objects like ball, apple, spaghetti, etc., but could identify abstract
> >objects on flash cards like "blue circle" and "red triangle." According to
> >the researchers, its ability to accurately identify abstract objects is
> >beyond even the highest non-human primates.
> >
> >The intelligence of parrots and their close relatives, and crows and their
> >relatives (i.e. ravens and jays) is fairly widely known, but I have also
> >heard that pidgeons have exceeded humans on some tests where they were
> >trained to identify complex abstract designs transformed though reflection,
> >rotation, etc. In fact, in a recent _Discover_ article it was claimed that
> >a group of trained pidgeons could accurately descriminate between different
> >styles of art. For example, they could tell the difference between works of
> >Picasso and works of Matisse (spelling?).
> >
> >Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that birds are gifted in identifying objects
> >and patterns visually since the biggest part of their brains are the enlarged
> >optic lobes while for us mammals the largest part of our brains, I think, are
> >essentially swollen olfactory lobes.
> >
> >Birds (and other dinosaurs) possess much larger ganglia (nerve bundles) in
> >their hip and shoulder regions than do mammals. It's pretty well known that
> >when a chicken's head is cut off, the body still possesses the ability to
> >flap and run. What I have been wondering about is if these ganglia act like
> >regional "co-processors" that off-load some of the motor control from the
> >brain. I don't suggest that birds and dinosaurs "think" with these areas,
> >but that a level of gross motor control may occur there requiring only simple
> >commands from the brain like "run" or "fly fast." This type of operation
> >would be especially useful in animals like birds because it would mean the
> >brain could be smaller and the weight from an advanced nervous system could
> >be distributed more evenly and not make the bird quite so top-heavy. This
> >type of nervous system might also prove useful to dinosaurs: in a large beast
> >the ganglias might enable quicker and more complex responses to stimuli.
> > Since it could take several seconds for a message to be sent from the brain
> >to the tail along normal pathways, by narrowing the bandwidth of messages
> >sent from the brain, it might be possible to send these messages more
> >quickly, and send more complex commands enabling the large animal to be
> >quicker and more coordinated than one might otherwise expect.
> >
> >Parrots and ravens already have big brains. If I recall correctly, in
> >comparison to their body weight, their brains exceed most mammals. Perhaps
> >because they "think" with what is effectively the optical processing parts of
> >their brains which would presumably work differently and, not unconceivably,
> >more efficiently than the olfactory regions we think with, birds may not need
> >brains as large mammals' to be equally "intelligent." Also, the existence of
> >ganglia might suggest that the brain could be smaller still while off-loading
> >some of its functions elsewhere.
> >
> >I am well outside of my field in this message and welcome any suggestions
> >and/or corrections to any of my ideas presented here.
> >
> >V. Smith
> >
> >
>
> Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
> Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
> University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
> Tacoma, WA 98416
>
>
>