Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 May 2

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May 2

Intelligence of magpies

Something I remember reading about once. You know how magpies like to bury pieces of food for later retrieval? Apparently some magpies will only pretend to hide the food if they notice that another magpie is watching them, because they figure that the other bird will just steal it as soon as they're gone. So they hold it in their mouth or swallow it (birds can easily regurgitate things), take it away and try to lose the observer. Apparently this is a sign of significant intelligence that very few animals (and not all humans) possess? What's the name for it, anyone know?

Yaknow, it's like "I know that he will do this because I would do the same to him if he were in my place and I know that he also knows this - but I also know that he can be fooled". That thought process. Knowing that another individual has intelligence, the same as you do. --Iloveparrots (talk) 20:50, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Or learning through bitter experience. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:27, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

There is actually a thing though. The ability to speculate what another individual knows, or doesn't know. There's an experiment they can do with people. Put two people in a room with a scientist and an object in front of them, ask one person to leave the room while the scientist hides the object somewhere. Then ask the second person where the first person will start looking for the hidden object, when instructed once he/she returns to the room. Apparently quite a few people answer that the first person will start looking in the place where the scientist hid the object, despite them not being there to witness this and having no way of knowing. This apparently demonstrates something (the correct answer is supposed to be "they'll start looking from the place where they last saw the object"). --Iloveparrots (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

That's the Sally-Anne test. Most neuro-typical kids over about 4 will pass it. LongHairedFop (talk) 19:36, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

See Theory of mind in animals. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:41, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, i knew the concept, not the name. Greglocock (talk) 23:43, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

If its not in the Deception in animals article, then it should be. A cursory scan didn't find anything, but its a fairly long article. --2603:6081:1C00:1187:910F:9107:F1C7:15E1 (talk) 23:35, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

The section Deception in animals § Tactical deception mentions common ravens and Eurasian jay preferentially caching their food out of sight of other birds, but not deceptive fake-caching.  --Lambiam 07:59, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Here we are told that black-billed magpies hold the food to be deposited in a cache in a small pouch under their tongues, and that after hammering the ground to form a small hole into which the food can be deposited, they may move the food to another location if other magpies are watching.  --Lambiam 07:59, 3 May 2022 (UTC)