Here’s a fun little video for your Sunday morning. Crows are sledding. Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic called up Alan Kamil, the co-director of the Center for Avian Intelligence at the University of Nebraska, to hear his thoughts on the birds behavior. Kamil’s response was wholly scientific, namely that he couldn’t comment on whether the bird was playing or mimicking behavior it had seen.
“Human beings have a strong, strong, strong tendency that if we see an animal do something that’s analogous to what we do, like use a tool or answer an arithmetic question, we assume that the animal is doing it and understands the situation in the same way we do,” he said. “And sometimes that’s true but more often it’s false.”
via The Atlantic