Öffentlicher Vortrag: Why Birds are Smart

Öffentlicher Vortrag

Referent: Prof. Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Great apes like chimpanzees are smart and have a large neocortex. Birds like corvids and parrots have much smaller brains and no neocortex. This should cast a dim prospect on their cognitive abilities. But studies of the last two decades revealed there is not a single cognitive ability of chimpanzees with brain weights of ca. 400g that meanwhile was not also demonstrated in corvids with brains of just 12g. How is that possible? This can only be the case if complex cognition developed independently several times in animals with different brain organizations. In my talk I will take you on a scientific journey that aims to identify which neural features really seems to matter for complex cognition and are shared by apes, corvids, and parrots. Astoundingly, although bird and mammalian brains look so different, we will see that both independently evolved similar neural solutions to become smart. It is likely that evolution does not lack creativity; it is just facing a severe limitation of degrees of freedom when wiring a vertebrate brain for sophisticated cognition. As a result, it re-invents the wheel over and over again.


Gemeinsam organisiert von Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus und SFB1528: Cognition of Interaction

Veranstaltungsort und Adresse

Tagungs- und Veranstaltungshaus Alte Mensa , Wilhelmsplatz 3, 37073 Göttingen

28. November 2023

• Di

  28.11.2023

  18:00

Öffentlicher Vortrag: Why Birds are Smart

Diese Veranstaltung in Göttingen (Innenstadt) wurde von DPZ-2012 veröffentlicht. Öffentlicher Vortrag: Why Birds are Smart ist den Rubriken Vortrag, Wissenschaft, Biologie und Göttingen zugeordnet.

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