Do birds think faster than humans?

Question

It always amazes me how small birds change direction mid-flight and seem to do it frequently, being able to make tons of movements in small urban areas with lots of obstacles.

Same thing with squirrels – they move so fast and seem to be able to make a hundred movements in the time a human could be able to make ten!

So what’s going on here? Do some animals just THINK faster than humans, and not only move faster than them?

In: Biology

Answer 1

There is three things here, reaction time, ability to perceive things, and thinking.

First of all reaction times are different for different animals and individuals. Most bird species probably have faster reaction times than humans.

Secondly how well we are able to react to things depends on how well we are able to perceive what is going on. Through practice we learn to pick up relevant information better but we are limited by our senses. Different animals sense the world differently. Birds see wider range of color or can see much further than humans. Bird senses that evolved to help birds to fly fast in dense forest help them to navigate in cities too.

Third there is thinking. If humans grew wings over night birds would most likely beat us in every flying competition. But humans would smash less into windows because we are better at thinking. Out ability to think lets us perceive things beyond our senses. It helps us to react better to things we had time to think about but thinking wont help us when we are just about to smash that window we thought was open.

To your question if birds think faster than humans, I would say no. How would you even measure speed of thought? To some simpler question you might come up with an answer faster. But thats just because the though process is shorter. Even the smartest birds come up with solutions to simplest problems slower than most humans. When we tell someone to think fast we are usually telling them to react without thinking.

tlrd. Thinking has little to do with how fast movements bird is able to do. They just have fast reaction times and are good at perceiving information relevant to doing bird things.