Across several news feeds on the same day, a claim surfaced that crows reach visual decisions about twice as fast as humans and monkeys, using a classic psychology test. The reports suggest that a crow brain, lacking the layered neocortex we associate with thinking, runs much the same decision calculation as a primate's. What reached readers, though, are echoes of headlines rather than the study itself, so the claim sits in a space between a striking discovery and an unverified one. It invites us to wonder whether speed of judgment depends on the grand architecture of a brain at all, or on som
Crows Make Decisions Up to Twice as Fast as Humans, Study Finds
A crow, with no neocortex, reportedly out-decided humans and monkeys
Mark
So the headline is that crows decide twice as fast as humans. Why does that land?
Mimi
Because we tend to treat our big neocortex as the engine of good decisions. Here is an animal without one, doing a classic visual task faster than people and monkeys.
Luke
Careful, though. What we actually have is headlines. No paper, no authors, no journal in what we were given.
Mark
Fair. What do the outlets agree on?
Mimi
That crows took a classic psychology test and decided roughly twice as fast as humans. Phys.org adds monkeys to that comparison.
Luke
And ScienceAlert says two crows. If that's accurate, it's a tiny sample. Twice as fast might describe those two birds, not crows in general.
Mark
What about the claim that crows, flies and monkeys do the same calculation?
Mimi
That's from a DongA Science headline. It suggests one decision computation shows up in very different brains.
Luke
But the headline is compressed, and monkeys do have a neocortex, so I can't tell exactly what's being claimed. I'd call it unclear until we see the paper.
Mark
And faster and better?
Luke
Faster is the number we have. Better is a Post headline, and nothing here says how accuracy was measured.
Mimi
So the honest takeaway is a promising finding, with the details still to be checked.
O Pulso
- Headlines stacked together in one feed declare that crows out-decide humans and monkeys, creating a jolt of surprise.
- The claim that a brain without a neocortex performs the same decision math as a primate unsettles long-held assumptions about where thinking lives.
- Readers are left without the original paper, so the sample size, which one outlet hints was just two crows, remains unknown.
- The story is landing as a provocative but secondhand finding, waiting on the peer-reviewed study to confirm or temper its dramatic figures.
Across several news feeds on the same day, a claim surfaced that crows reach visual decisions about twice as fast as humans and monkeys, using a classic psychology test. The reports suggest that a crow brain, lacking the layered neocortex we associate with thinking, runs much the same decision calculation as a primate's. What reached readers, though, are echoes of headlines rather than the study itself, so the claim sits in a space between a striking discovery and an unverified one. It invites us to wonder whether speed of judgment depends on the grand architecture of a brain at all, or on something older and more widely shared.
The headlines arrived together, one after another. The New York Post said crows make faster and better decisions than humans. ScienceAlert described two crows that took a classic psychology test and outpaced human performance. Smithsonian Magazine reported that crows act on visual information roughly twice as fast as people, and Phys.org stated the same comparison with monkeys included.
What we actually have is this cluster of aggregated headlines, not the study. There is no methods section, no list of authors, no journal citation. The shared claim is that crows, given a classic test of visual decision-making, decided about twice as fast as humans and monkeys.
The ScienceAlert headline mentions two crows. If that is accurate, the sample is tiny, and the twice-as-fast figure deserves caution. No other outlet here gives a bird count.
A second claim, from a DongA Science headline, holds that crow, fly, and monkey brains perform the same decision calculation despite lacking a neocortex. The phrasing is compressed, and since monkeys do have a neocortex, the intended meaning is unclear. The likely idea is that one underlying computation appears across very different brains.
If that holds, the speed of a decision may depend less on a particular brain structure than we assumed. The source remains secondhand, and the question of whether crows were also more accurate, not just faster, is left open. The original paper would settle the sample, the task, and whether the result reflects a single pair of birds or a broader pattern.
The headlines arrived together, stacked in a single feed. The New York Post said crows make faster, better decisions than humans. ScienceAlert described two crows that took a classic psychology test and left human performance in the dust. Smithsonian Magazine reported that crows can act on visual information at lightning speed, roughly twice as fast as people. Phys.org put it plainly: crows make decisions twice as fast as humans and monkeys.
That is the whole of what the source material offers, and it is worth being exact about it. What reached us is a set of headlines from aggregated coverage, not the study itself. The body of the item repeats those headlines and carries no methods section, no author names, no journal citation.
What the headlines agree on is this. Crows were put through a classic psychology test of visual decision-making, the kind of task long used to measure how quickly and accurately humans and other primates choose between options based on what they see. On that kind of task, the reported finding is that crows decided about twice as fast as humans and as monkeys.
The ScienceAlert headline specifies two crows. If that count reflects the study, it is a very small sample, and the figure of twice as fast should be read with that in mind. The other outlets do not give a number of birds in the material available here, so the size of the experiment is not something we can confirm.
There is a second claim, carried by a DongA Science headline in its Biology of Romance column: that crow, fly, and monkey brains perform the same decision calculation without a neocortex. The wording is slightly odd, since monkeys do have a neocortex, and the headline is too compressed to say exactly what is meant. The likely reading is that the same underlying computation shows up in very different brains, including in animals whose brain architecture differs sharply from ours. But the source does not spell that out, and we should not claim more than it does.
Still, the shape of the finding is clear enough to be interesting. Humans have a large, layered neocortex that we tend to associate with complex thinking. Birds do not have one in the same form. If a crow can match or beat primates on a decision task, and if the mathematics of the choice looks the same across crows, flies, and monkeys, then the speed of a decision may owe less to a particular brain structure than we assumed.
The coverage here is secondhand, passed from outlet to outlet. Several of these headlines, including the one calling the crows' decisions better as well as faster, go further than speed alone. Whether better means more accurate, and by how much, is not stated.
What to watch for is the original peer-reviewed paper. It would settle the sample size, the exact task, how speed and accuracy were measured, and whether the twice as fast figure holds across the birds tested or reflects a single pair.
Citações Notáveis
Crows make decisions twice as fast as humans and monkeys.— Phys.org headline
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