"Bird Brain" how they are special

After watching the documentary of “Bird Brain” I learned so much of what cognitive abilities these animals have. There is one particular detail I kinda had my two senses on and that was the idea of imprinting. The idea that when the animals are born they follow whatever their mother may do, in this case it was the Austrian zoologist Conrad Lorenze who the geese imprinted on and followed him and did everything he did (4:55). I know there are many other species who have this behavior as well. There is as well an instinctive behavior that is programmed in all birds that once done cannot be stopped such as a goose rolling an egg back to its nest when it’s not even there (5:47). Looking back at the articles we read in week one it reminds of the article we read about crows and how society views them as bad luck and just ugly to the spirit, but they are very much intelligent birds that have the ability to mourn their fellow companions. For example in this documentary we meet a bird named Wek she lost her mate and began to pull out her feathers when her partner died (16:17). This is an example of this species mourning and feeling a loss, a sign of empathy. I genuinely believe animals have the capability of being so empathetic and intelligent, just as we saw in the video where birds were given a problem and they were able to adapt and solve it. All these experiments demonstrate just that. Overall this documentary was very enjoyable to watch and it made me think a lot about how birds are special and how other species can also potentially be as intelligent.