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Brainpower boost for birds in large groups

Whether intelligence is selected for in species that have a complex social life is debated and hard to test. Cognitive performance and associated reproductive success are now linked to group size in wild magpies.
  1. Andrew Whiten

    1. Andrew Whiten is in the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK.

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Observations of primates’ everyday lives led the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey to make a revolutionary proposal1 in 1976 to explain primate intelligence. Before then, it had been commonly assumed that these animals’ cleverness was an adaptation to their physical niches, reflected in their need for sophisticated skills in realms such as foraging, navigation or avoiding predators. Humphrey suggested instead that the complex social dynamics experienced when such animals live in a group become the main selective force driving the evolution of primate intelligence. In a paper in Nature, Ashton et al.2 offer support for Humphrey’s social-intelligence hypothesis, in a study of wild Australian magpies (Cracticus tibicen dorsalis, also known as Gymnorhina tibicen dorsalis).

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Nature 554, 303-304 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-01487-3

References

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