Yeah, but consider how many neurons a bird has to work with compared to a chimp.
I know birds have some damn clever tricks, like the red light using, walnut-eating crows in the UK, but it seems to me as if these have to be the result of some kind of serendipitous processing shortcut, like the sort of tricks programmers had to find back in the day to make 1k chess and the like (I guess graphics guys are still chasing those pretty hard).
And this kind of trick, although it results in the odd handy feat which must undoubtedly count towards any measure of intelligence, strikes me as likely being rather specific in nature and thus less indicative of the sort of ability you would generally associate with said feat.
That’s my feeling, anyway. I’d be surprised if whatever processing shortcuts birds use to get so many tricks out of such little grey matter are general-purpose enough to substitute entirely for more powerful hardware running software you might expect to be more adaptable. Although it is disappointing how little mental flexibility you see in the higher animals…
