Animals like dogs, crows, and apes evolved to have different kinds of brains, but each of them is capable of cognition worth studying
, as I described in my last post. Crows are obviously not closely related to us, and they have not lived with us for the last 30,000 years. But another common factor connects them to dogs, apes and us: They live in complex social groups. In addition, it seems that at least some of them live in harsh environments where it is difficult for them to get access to food, forcing them to develop some cognitive skills that would help them survive.
Crows also provide another practical example for convergent evolution. In humans we are just starting to understand how the brain works. But one thing is quite certain — that our complex cognitive abilities have their origin in the neocortex, an enormous region in the human brain. So, we would assume that this is also the case for animals with sophisticated cognitive skills.
Once again, birds did it their way. They developed wings — but different ones than insects. And they developed cognitive skills — but using a different brain structure than humans. So although cognitive psychologists do love the animals we study, we don’t choose subjects for their “loveable-ness.” We choose them based on the cognitive traits they exhibit, whether they were developed through millennia of cooperating with humans, a genetic history we share, or from the pressures of social interaction.Bräuer, J., Hanus, D., Pika, S., Gray, R., & Uomini, N. . Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not"One Cognition". J Intell, 8.La Greca, M. .
Prum, R. O. . Development and evolutionary origin of feathers. Journal of Experimental Zoology, 285, 291-306.
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