"For example, there’s a good argument to be made that #humans, #chimpanzees, and #bonobos all belong together in one #genus, either #Pan or #Homo. It’s only our desire to see ourselves as something special that causes us to put them in one genus and us in another. If #ravens—probably the smartest **living** #dinosaurs, although some #parrots give them a run for their money—were building a #taxonomy, they’d undoubtedly lump us together with our close relatives. But they might go to great lengths to separate themselves from #crows!"
I like to think I can still turn a nice phrase now and then.
https://dinosaursworld.quora.com/If-Troodon-was-not-real-then-which-dinosaur-was-the-smartest-2
@FeralRobots Hah! Could be. I **think** there have been enough experiments on both to show that ravens are smarter, on the whole, but crows are pretty bright too.
Mainly I chose that example because "raven" and "crow" are both names we assign kind of randomly to species in the #Corvus genus: there's no hard and fast rule as to which is which, just a general tendency for birds we call "ravens" to be larger. So I can definitely see some corvid taxonomist creating something like the rather artificial *Pan/Homo* split.
@medigoth I liked the comparison because people have opinions about them that can be enlighteningly mapped to the Pan/Homo comparison (& am assuming that was the intent).
@FeralRobots Oh yeah, that was definitely deliberate. 😀 No reason to think raven taxonomists would be any less self-centered than human ones.
@medigoth Are ravens really smarter than crows, or do we just like them more because they're not as noisy & bossy?
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