Dear Grackle,
Birds aren’t smart enough to write a column in a state magazine. Which human on staff is the ghost writer?
Sincerely,
Not a bird-brain
Dear Admirer,
That’s pretty rich, considering everything I’ve been hearing about humans turning to “artificial intelligence” to write their essays or answer their everyday questions. I will have you know that grackles are very smart birds – all on our own! A 2016 study published in the human journal Peerj tested grackles’ problem-solving abilities and found that we are quite savvy. Not only were we able to learn to associate certain colors with a tasty snack, but we also could be taught to solve the famous “the crow and the pitcher” puzzle, in the which a bird must manipulate water levels in a tube to reach a piece of floating food. We did this by using objects as tools to raise the water volume. (If you think about it, a laptop is also a tool. Just saying.)
Yours,
Grackle
