Uh oh, maybe Hitchcock was onto something...

The New York Times reported something really interesting yesterday: Birds are smart! Or rather, much smarter than people had been giving them credit for. I think I'd seen on TV that parrots are quite intelligent, but now scientists agree that bird brains in general are very sophisticated, comparable to chimpanzees. Here are some examples from the full article (free 'til Monday night for NYT members):

• Crows in a laboratory can take small lengths of wire, make hooks, and use them to retrieve food.


• Crows at a university campus in Japan wait for cars to stop at a traffic light, then place walnuts onto the road, hop back to the curb, and wait for the cars to crack the nuts as they drive over.


• Clark nutcrackers can keep track of where they've hidden up to 30,000 seeds. If another bird is watching when they're hiding food, they go away and come back later, which some scientists think shows "theory of mind" -- that is, understanding that another bird thinks like they do.


• "Magpies, at an earlier age than any other creature tested, develop an understanding of the fact that when an object disappears behind a curtain, it has not vanished."


• "Pigeons can memorize up to 725 different visual patterns, and are capable of what looks like deception. Pigeons will pretend to have found a food source, lead other birds to it and then sneak back to the true source."


• "Parrots, some researchers report, can converse with humans, invent syntax and teach other parrots what they know. Researchers have claimed that Alex, an African gray, can grasp important aspects of number, color concepts, the difference between presence and absence, and physical properties of objects like their shapes and materials. He can sound out letters the same way a child does."

Oh, at work we had these huge salads today! It was the paper production meeting (second in two months!), and KC had gotten us these Mexican salads with grilled chicken, avocado, and grilled bits of pineapple on top of huge mounds of romaine lettuce, in these to-go dishes nearly a foot across! They each came with sides of tomatoes, guacamole, and four (count 'em, four) dipping sauces/salad dressings.