On structure and context

By Noah Strycker

At about the same time that babies begin to recognise their own reflection, they start becoming aware of the thoughts and feelings of others — for instance, by showing embarrassment or trying to help a mother in distress. Gallup believed these two conditions are linked.

Only by having a sense of self, he reasoned, can you make inferences about others’ thoughts and actions. Thus, only creatures with selfawareness should display gratitude, deception, empathy, sympathy, humour and associated mental states. That’s a pretty significant connection if most of the world’s animals really don’t have a sense of self.

Perhaps the world is divided into creatures that can comprehend their own being — and infer about the experiences of others — and those that merely see others as mates or competition. If that’s true, according to Gallup, your pet dog or cat falls into the second category, along with most birds, but magpies belong in the first — with us.

Magpies, with their mischievous personality, ability to recognise individual predators and unique social behaviours that hint at emotion — such as holding funerals — are good candidates to develop the sense of self that we associate with intelligence.

They have relatively large brains, comparable to apes and slightly below humans, even if the specific structures are organised differently.

(From “The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human”)