Re: Are birds really smarter than non-avian dinosaurs?

[Michael Habib <mhabib5@jhmi.edu>]

> Keep a few things in mind:
> 1) Not all birds are 'intelligent' (however you define the term). 
> Crows and parrots can exhibit seemingly intelligent behaviour, however 
> your average sparrow is still as dumb as an ox (in all probability, 
> dumber). In a contest of wills between a Tro-odon and a sparrow, I'd 
> be betting on the non-avian.

I would add that we have probably have a poor gauge of how intelligent 
most birds are.  Granted, a sparrow seems to clearly have lower problem 
solving ability than a crow or parrot, but is it actually dumb?  How 
well can we compare the intelligence of a large bovid and a passerine 
bird?  I know, I'm nit-picking, but it's to make a point - we can tell 
when a group of animals shows especially complex behavior, or learns 
quickly, but ranking the rest of the "non-outliers" is pretty tough and 
probably futile at present, except at very broad levels.

Also, on the subject of brain size in birds and flight - the one study 
I know of that actually tested the size of brains in flightless and 
flying birds (Iwaniuk et al., 2004) found no consistent difference.  
Volant birds apparently do not have consistently larger brains than 
non-flying relatives.  Of course, living flightless birds are 
secondarily non-flying, so it could be a unique situation.

Cheers,

--Mike H.


Michael Habib, M.S.
PhD. Candidate
Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
1830 E. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
(443) 280 0181
habib@jhmi.edu