Woodpecker Intelligence

I found the interaction and cooperation of this pair of Red Bellied Woodpeckers fascinating and thought provoking. They were collectively storing cedar berries in a pre-drilled cavity. Was that cooperation and planning, or "hard wired" instinct? It looked to me at least that the activity implied an intelligence that exercised choices by cooperation, tool using and reasoning. They jointly and cooperatively carried out the project of food gathering and storage, using their beaks to build the cavity and harvest the berries; and they had a reason to store it against future need. There had to be some conscious intelligence there, to my way of thinking.

Phil
I think woodpeckers are really strongly paired and undertake many activities in close contact with each other. I wonder how much they learn from each other. Here is a photo of 1 of 2 black-faced woodpeckers in Belize that were harvesting palm nuts. I took this at the wonderful Chan Chich lodge last January

Phil, while I think that we underestimate animals in many regards, I don't agree with your statement

the activity implied an intelligence that exercised choices by cooperation, tool using and reasoning.

I don't think that you can demonstrate cooperation simply by having two individuals engaged in similar activity at the same time. Nor do I think pecking a hole with a bill qualifies as tool use any more than catching bugs with a bill does. Finally, storing food need not be a consciously reasoned choice--it can equally be a genetically conditioned behavior, engrained because it is an adaptive behavior.

There are plenty of good examples of animal intelligence (ravens problem solving skills for example), but I do think that many complex behaviors are genetically conditioned or at least favored, and need not express conscious will, choice, or reasoning.

If I agreed they need not, then equally I would agree they could. I respect your position, however. Having said that, conditioned behavior would be a slippery slope Richard Dawkins might choose, but I intend to avoid it where I can.

Leafcutter ants harvest bits of leaves of specific trees, transport them to their nests, chew them up and use them to grow fungus, which is a primary food source for the ant colony. Highly complex, sophisticated behaviors, which might seem to imply conscious thought, planning, and a high level of "intelligence". I think most entomologists would attribute these sophisticated behaviors largely to hard-wired behavioral routines, not to a high level of intelligence or foresight. As Brian said, natural selection can produce complicated, sophisticated behaviors even in organisms with relatively simple brains and nervous systems. Read about the life history and behavior of slime molds some time - these single-celled organisms with no nervous system at all perform amazingly sophisticated behaviors at times.

Having said that, conditioned behavior would be a slippery slope Richard Dawkins might choose, but I intend to avoid it where I can.

The desirability of a given proposition has no bearing on its truth or falsehood, only on our willingess to accept it.

I have no problem with the concept of conditioned behavior. My question is where does one draw the line between that and conscious thought? Ah, well, this is not a philosophy forum. As much as I enjoy discussing it, I propose, and will adhere to, not seeking elusive truths in a bird photography forum.

Conscious thought is a tough nut to demonstrate, Phil, from an empirical standpoint. I think most of us who spend much time watching animals at some point begin to consider birds in general as sentient, thinking beings, but knowing with some degree of confidence exactly what is going on in their brains with respect to specific processes is at this point impossible. I don't think neurobiologists and neuroethologists have any way of reaching that level of understanding. We don't even understand from a mechanistic standpoint how something as fundamental as memory works. Memory. That's kind of the cornerstone process from which all higher-level cognitive processes build, and we don't have a clue how a brain stores memory.