Birds with bigger brains found to be less likely to get shot

[vellavu]

http://phys.org/news/2016-11-birds-bigger-brains-shot.html

A pair of researchers has found that birds with bigger brains are less likely to get shot by hunters than birds with smaller brains. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, Anders Pape Møller, with Université Paris-Sud in France and Johannes Erritzøe with House of Bird Research, in Denmark describe a study they carried out on bird brain comparisons in hunted prey.

As the researchers note, hundreds of millions of animals are killed each year by hunters—some purely for sport, others for their meat. In this new effort, they sought to learn more about the possible evolutionary impact
hunting might have on various species of birds.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

The two researchers went into a field and shot two Partridges, even though there wasn't a pear tree nearby. When they got the birds back to their lab they dissected the birds and found one to have a slightly larger brain, the other had been shot before; proof positive they exclaimed and all was well until the four year old daughter of the janitor stated that if the brain was bigger you'd think it was more intelligent and would therefore have not been in the tree. As the song says = and a partridge in a pear tree. The researchers thought about what the child had said and decided to forget it. Bet you are glad you just read that pile off crap?

 

[thetopher]

Then there are the really smart birds that run around in man-suits...😱

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Then there are the really smart birds that run around in man-suits...😱

Or the birds that pretend to be a man in a bird suit.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

There are a few really smart birds that hardly ever get shot.
They are the ones toting sub-machine guns and answer to the name sir!

 

[Ethan Reigns]

I don't get this correlation with larger brains being more intelligent. Brains operate by conduction of nerve impulses from end to end using displacement of ions in a fluid channel. This is not a fast process like conduction of electrons in a wire. If the neurons are longer, their reactions would be slower. If their brains were larger because they had more nerves dedicated to sensory awareness and array processing tasks that permit a target to be distinguished from other things in the field of view, that would be one thing. But the same architecture on a larger scale would just mean a slower reaction time. Nothing in the research suggests that they are even looking at that.