Episode 2 Blow Your Mind

BOTH: We are Dr Chris and Dr Xand van Tulleken.

-We are tracking down the most awesome...

-..incredible...

..and epic things in the universe.

Come with us and discover unbelievable things

that will blow your mind!

Blow Your Mind will be bringing you all the top experts

in unbelievable stuff,

from icebergs to elephants,

-spaceships to sharks.

-Look at that!

And this week it's all about amazing animals.

So hold onto your brains, here's what's coming up.

Today, we put brainy birds to the test,

birds that can pick a lock...

and even birds that can see into the future.

Earlier today, we saw Bran the raven complete the puzzle box

in an amazing superfast time.

-Are you still trying to figure out this puzzle, Chris?

-No.

I figured it out. I just want to see if I can do it quicker

-than Bran the raven.

-Let's see again how fast Bran did it.

And Bran goes straight to work.

He's pulling open that door easily.

He's going for the smaller box.

Lid comes off, ball comes out,

and now he eats the reward.

-Bran did that in just 12 seconds. Are you ready, Chris?

-I think so.

Three, two, one, go!

Ta-da!

-Four seconds quicker than Bran.

-Boom! A triumph for humankind.

Yeah, but that was the first time Bran had seen this puzzle,

-and you've been practising for hours.

-I don't have a beak.

Don't worry, Chris. He's up against the best.

Ravens and crows are amazing problem-solvers

but they're not the only intelligent birds.

This is Hoy, a Eurasian jay -

a member of the crow family.

Our mate, Chris Packham,

has come to Cambridge to meet Prof Nicky Clayton,

a world expert on crows, to find out just how intelligent

these birds really are.

Nicky sets up experiments to understand

the different abilities these birds use to solve problems

and today, she has set Hoy a tricky challenge.

He needs to work out that raising the water level

is the best way of getting the worms

and then he needs to figure out how to do it.

-Nicky, let's see what's going on. Fire up the laptop.

-I will do.

Nicky's birds have had very little human contact

so Chris and Nicky are going to watch Hoy from a safe distance.

Straight away, he starts dropping stones into the water.

They're quite specific about what they use, actually,

and how many stones. They don't put more stones in than they need.

He's checking the water rise

every time he puts the stone in.

-Yeah.

-Hops up, and you can see the eye looking down.

-Look at that! The small stone wasn't going to be enough.

-No.

OK, go on.

No, can't quite reach.

You know, Nicky, it's almost

as if he understands the effect of dropping that stone in.

That's right. He only does this

when there's liquid in the tube. If there's a worm in the tube

and it's filled with sand, he doesn't bother.

He knows that it needs to be a liquid in that tube

in order for the stones to work.

Hoy understands that a sinking stone

will cause the water level to rise

and this, in turn, will allow him

to reach the waxworm.

He also knows the same technique won't work with sand,

and this reveals the ability to understand

the rules of cause and effect.

Whoa! Back up! OK, so what we're saying is,

the jay understands that if it gets a rock

and puts it in the tube of water,

the water level, with worms floating in it, will rise up the tube

-and then, from the top of the tube, it can reach the worms?

-Exactly.

Scientists call that cause and effect,

so the stone being put in the water

causes the effect of the water level rising.

-Like when I get in the bath and the level goes up.

-Exactly.

But the training tube that he used didn't have any water in it

so when he put the stone in that, the food came out the bottom.

So he's able to join up his knowledge

about tubes and food and rocks

and use a whole different technique to get the food out of the tube?

That is amazing.

So Hoy was able to solve this problem

because he already knew how to use the stones.

He's able to learn rules for one situation

and then apply those rules to a new scenario.

Scientists call this flexible thinking.

It's how, earlier, the New Caledonian crow

solved the multi-stage problem

and also how Bran made such short work of my puzzle box.

The birds were thinking flexibly,

using previous experience to solve new problems.

So let me understand this.

Birds can use skills that they've learned previously

-to solve brand-new problems?

-Yeah. Lots of animals can't do this.

Like a dog, for instance, can learn to fetch a stick,

learn to walk on its hind legs and learn to push a bell

but it can't combine those three skills to solve a new problem.

What, like a problem involving pressing a bell with a stick

-standing up?

-Yeah. Exactly.

-That's why dogs never ring your doorbell.

-I'd never thought of that.

I guess when people call me Birdbrain,

it's actually a compliment.

Yeah. Sure it is, Birdbrain.

Anyway, back to these amazing, mind-blowing birds.

Chris Packham is now off to meet some cockatoos

who aren't just intelligent, they're also creative.

I've come to Austria to meet a rather inquisitive

and endearing type of bird.

'These are Goffin's cockatoos, a type of parrot...'

Oi! Can I have that back?

'..big-brained birds with a very curious nature.'

I'm here to meet Dr Alice Auersperg,

an expert in these animals.

She's studying their ability to innovate,

and I'm intrigued to know what that might reveal

about their powers of imagination.

-Alice, these birds are very keen to get to know me, it seems.

-Yes.

They are especially interested in you because you are new.

And it's not just me that's new.

So is the entire crew.

And everything that we're wearing.

My watch, in particular,

has caught the attention of Olympia here.

And within minutes, she's worked out how to release the clasp.

I knew parrots were clever and they can talk.

These guys are even more special than you might expect.

These cockatoos have an amazing ability to use their imagination

to solve problems. Just watch what happens

when they're asked to pick a lock.

To investigate what's going on in the minds of these parrots,

Alice created this - the lock box.

Trapped inside is a tasty nut

held securely behind this elaborate locking mechanism.

To see how it opens, we need to employ the services

of a master safe-cracker.

Or Muppet as he's, perhaps inappropriately, called.

Before we begin, though, there's the question of eyewear.

We have to put sunglasses on

because we could cue the birds with our eye movements.

Can they see where we're looking? Can they do that?

We don't know whether this species can

but it has been proven that jackdaws can follow

-the eye movement of humans.

-Better safe than sorry.

We'll forgive fashion for that and make scientific progress.

And here comes Muppet.

-Oh, he's displaying towards you.

-A little bit of display.

Yes, he's a boy.

Very nice, yes. That's a crest of some distinction.

I had one like that in the 1980s myself

but perhaps, Muppet, you could take your attention to the lock.

Muppet has done this before

and he delivers a masterclass.

He quickly removes the pin

and then the screw.

He discards the central bolt

before shifting the locking wheel.

And this releases the final bolt.

Voila!

He's reached the nut inside.

Wow! So Muppet the cockatoo is a master safe-cracker.

If you're at home, you'd better lock your windows and doors.

-That's pointless - Muppet can unlock them.

-I hadn't thought of that.

Why are you wearing those ridiculous sunglasses?

So Muppet can't follow my eye movements

-and get clues about how to crack the safe.

-But Muppet isn't here.

Also, I look a bit like Chris Packham.

But to make sure Muppet can't learn the sequence by heart,

Alice can swap the lock sections around,

or even move them entirely.

So now I want to change the way in which the box works

and set Muppet a new challenge,

one that he's never seen before.

There are five parts. Why don't we take out the middle bit?

Yes, let's.

The upper section is now redundant,

leaving only the lower parts in operation.

It may look like we've made it easier

but, in fact, we've created an entirely new problem

with a different solution.

If Muppet can't see this,

he'll just repeat what he did before

and robotically go for the pin at the top,

but if he can see the new problem

and imagine a new solution,

then he'll go straight for the wheel.

OK, Alice, let's give him a go.

So now the moment of truth.

He's gone straight for the wheel.

And then the bar.

And he's in in less than ten seconds.

That gives us a crucial insight into his mind.

He must have looked at the problem,

worked it out in his head

and imagined the solution.

Wow. So Muppet recognised immediately

it was a new lock, ignored the top part, went straight for the wheel

-and got the nut?

-Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it?

So cockatoos can not just recognise a completely new problem,

they can then use their imaginations to solve it,

-all with their tiny birdie brains.

-Yeah. That's not all.

What you are about to see now is completely mind-blowing.

Chris Packham is off to find out if birds can not only remember the past

but also see into the future.

Time-travelling birds? I've got to see this.

There's a common behaviour in the animal world

that seems to be about planning for the future.

It's called caching.

It's what squirrels do in the autumn -

hiding nuts in the ground so they can be dug up and eaten

over the winter months. But if caching were an Olympic sport,

then the corvids would be the gold medallists.

Most of them seem to do it,

much to the annoyance of the squirrels.

Scientists call this mental time travel.

So it's not like birds are the Doctor Who of the animal kingdom,

-moving backwards and forwards in time?

-No. It's not, Chris.

But it is pretty impressive

that they can use things they learned in the past

and plan for the future with them.

And this American corvid, the Clark's nutcracker,

is the caching king.

Researchers have observed how, every year,

it can store and remember the location

of thousands of different seeds.

This bird truly is the master of memory.

This skill is very rare in the animal kingdom.

So how do they do it?

It's all about the size of their brains.

This is about the size of a crow's brain, this ping pong ball,

and this tennis ball is about the size of dog's brain.

Which one is cleverer?

I know that the crow can solve harder problems than the dog,

but the dog's brain is bigger so I don't understand how that could be.

It's all about the size of your brain relative to your body.

The crow's brain is smaller than the dog's

but the crow itself is also smaller than a dog.

If you made the crow the same size as the dog,

-its brain would be twice as big as the dog's brain.

-That is amazing.

I really like using this scientific term "mental time travel"

to talk about simply planning stuff.

I'm going to do some mental time travel now.

I'm going to watch some future episodes of Blow Your Mind.

-What can you see?

-I can see elephants talking to each other,

-deadly dinosaur dolphins...

-What?

-That sounds a bit improbable.

-Nope.

It's all true and you can see it, too.

-Join us next time on...

-BOTH: Blow your mind!