Cogito Ergo Sum

I saw something awesome today. I don’t usually use the word ”awesome”…it reminds me of 14 year old girls and their conversations in the back of the bus…but I have to use it today.

I saw a crow with a piece of chewing gum in its beak. You are probably wondering what’s so awesome about a bird with gum…Obviously, birds and gum don’t really go well together…and I agree. But the bird seemed to have some issues with the gum being too hard. It was a pretty large piece of gum, and I’m guessing it wanted to divide it into smaller pieces before it ate it…something which was impossible to do with that dried up chunk. My first thought was: “yikes, you really shouldn’t eat the gum, birdie. It will go straight through you without fulfilling your nutritional needs.” Or actually, that’s a lie…My thoughts weren’t that fancy…They were probably closer to; “Don’t eat the gum birdie, it’s bad for you.” As I was thinking this, worried that the bird was going to give up and swallow the entire chunk in one go, and thereby forcing me to do bird-CPR, the bird did something I did not expect it to. It skipped along the pavement towards the nearest puddle and dipped the gum in the water. And all I could think was how I used to do that as a kid when I wanted to save my gum for later. I used to put it in a glass of water (‘cause we all know how important it was to chew your gum until it basically disintegrated in your mouth…) to preserve it. The water would keep it soft and retain some of the flavor in the gum for when I decided to continue my chewing. Im guessing the bird must have learned at some point that water can soften dry material, but I was still amazed by it.-Thinking that perhaps birds aint as dumb as I first thought. It also reminded me of another incident with a bird I had a couple of years ago.

I saw a seagull with a shell in its mouth. The only reason I spotted the bird was the fact that I was almost hit in the head by the shell. In an attempt to break the shell open, the bird flew about 10 meters into the air, dropped the shell down on the asphalt of the road I was walking on, and dived down to pick the shell up again. It repeated this pattern a couple of times, each time going higher before dropping the shell. I remember having two thoughts; 1: what a dumb bird doing this right in front of me on the road...where I was walking with a large german shepherd in a leash, and 2: What a smart bird…Faced with a problem (breaking the shell), it conducted an experiment (dropping it on to a hard surface), decided it worked but needed improvement (flying higher the next time) and eventually managed to open the shell…which it started eating as soon as my dog and I had passed.

I guess this only shows that birds have cognitive behavior…which is odd considering their brains. I dissected a chicken brain once in an anatomy class…and I have to tell you, there aint much to look at. Perhaps a proof that a large brain is unnecessary…further offering an explanation for why humans are so destructive. Our brains are too large for our bodies, offering plenty of space for unnecessary information. -Information that confuses our instincts…causing us to destroy what others have built and spitting our chewing gum out on the pavement for birds to pick up. Perhaps we would be better off with bird brains…just a thought.