After watching "Bird Brain"

The documentary video "Bird Brain" mainly focused on research experiments done to study the cognitive intelligence of birds. Three species of birds are presented as study subjects, which are crow, parrot, and goose. Among them all, goose is the one with the smallest brain. While researches done a century ago show that goose do some of their actions by instinct (without thinking), new studies show that geese can remember the priority of a certain cards presented while the whole set is not shown in order. That changed my mind and I now know that although some birds have smaller brains and do not appear to be that intelligent, they can still think, remember, and understand complicated things which we originally thought only dolphins and a few primate species can do. Parrots and crows, on the other hand, were proven to be able to think in a complicated way. They are proven to be able to use tools to help them get food from where they can't reach for. Besides, a box was given with a treat in it, and there are four different ways to get the treat from it. While parrots live in a natural habitat that is comparatively more peaceful, they are able to figure out all four ways with no problems. Crows, on the other hand, while they live in a cruel natural habitat, their instinct of being cautious to new stuffs made it refuse to go inside the box, but to use a stick as tool instead to get the food that's inside. Other than that, studying is also proven to be true among crows, which they can learn how to do new things by observing others do it. They can also remember potential threats and tell the information to other crows. Common emotions also exist in them because they have similar behaviors as our funerals. Eye contact is also proven to be an ability of crows. At the end of the documentary, it says, "You can explain a lot of animals' actions through instinctive behaviors that don't require a lot of conscious thinking. But it's becoming harder and harder to ignore the evidence that birds are capable of solving problems, of making friendships, of learning, of putting themselves into the experiences of other animals. I think we're starting to realize that the simplest explanation may not be that they're automatons. The simplest explanation may be that they're seeing the world in much the same way we do" (51:25). This makes me think of Jeffrey Kluger's article Animals Have Brains, but do They Have Minds?, which in that article, he talks about numerous species of animals also have similar feelings and consciousness like us human beings. It is true that we might have been seeing other species too simple. Intelligence may not be a word that only describes our own species.