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Roula Khalaf, editor of FT, chooses her favorite story in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a scientific commentator
The new Kaledonian crow can claim that it is one of the smartest birds in the world. This can put together two sticks to make a “fish” stick for food. Corvid’s blinding tendency for strategic planning and solving problems mirrored the cognitive skills of some great apes.
Observations like these have encouraged a 10-year discussion of whether birds and mammals enjoy the common cognitive legacy of a common ancestral, who lived more than 300 mn years ago and whether their skills settled were developed separately. Now, the research indicates the latter, with birds and mammals independently develop similar cognitive abilities, different evolutionary paths.
In other words, it is not common origin, but “convergent evolution”, in which unrelated species develop comparable behavior and traits, birds and mammals give their superficially similar cognitive fiery power. This finding is essential for understanding our own evolution: if wild different generations of living beings take different evolutionary routes on the way to the end of similar neural circles and behavior, it hints that they can be limited ways to build a sophisticated brain.
The new research, consisting of trio of works published in Science last week, is very deeply dived into Pallij, a bulbous piece of bird brain containing neuronic circles basically cognition. Palij is a very wide equivalent of brain bark in humans.
One key technique, called a one -nacelic transcriptomy, was used to detect which genes are important to individual neurons (brain cells) in bird pali. “All cells in the body contain the same DNA, but each cell reads different parts of that DNA,” explains Giacomo Gattoni, an evolutionary biologist at Columbia University who was not involved in research, but co -authored the accompanying comment article.
This selective reading of the cells, adds, allows them to bloom and function differently, ending, say, as muscle or liver cells: “The technique allows you to pass neuron from neurons and see which genes each neuron reads and then compare through the species. “It was the focus of one of the three papers, which individually profiled thousands of neurons in chickens, mice, lizards and turtles (reptiles, birds and mammals share a common ancestor dating about 320 million years ago); compared them to see who were preserved or not, through the species; Reading, studying “DNA sequences that act like a switch; a third focusing on how neuronian sensory circles in the chicken and gekon are assembled during embryonic development. University (Ku) Leuven in Belgium and Achucarro The Basque Center for Neuroscience in Spain – contributed to work.
Collectively, their research revealed that although there were pens in neural circles between species, superficially similar neurons are sometimes changed into different parts of the brain of birds, mammals and reptiles and did not necessarily connect in similar similars; were regulated in different ways; and that the brain circles on which similar cognitive features are based at different times and speed in birds, mammals and reptiles. Some birds of Pallija’s neurons did not have colleagues at mammals at all.
Processing evidence is that birds and mammals have embarked on separate evolutionary paths that have converged themselves into surprisingly similar neural architecture, creating behaviors that look similar. “This convergence suggests that there are final ways, and maybe just a few, building a complex brain,” Gattoni says, adding that the next step will be a research on how neural connection developed in different types.
Despite evidence that animals like octopus are intelligent, we humans usually overlook the cognitive abilities of other animals. But birds, originally from flying dinosaurs, also had to fight to survive, and cognitive gap can be rope than we assume. Corvids can count, fashion and use tools and get involved in a social game; Parrots can mimic language and even learn the meanings of words.
Nutcrackets can object thousands of snacks, taking them later when food is scarce – a powerful feat of spatial memory. That some of us are still throwing the term “brain of birds” because Barb indicates bad cognition in our own species, not theirs.
