Well, if all chickens were given freedom to roam outside their enclosures, just pray we don't have a avian flu outbreak here!

I know!

due to the comparatively exaggerated development of the Frontal Lobe in modern H.S.Sapiens (signified by brain cavity shape), it is assumed all the significant development of modern civilisation and its concepts belong solely to modern humans.
Experiments like this done with Alex suggest this is not the case.

I do think this kind of research can help our political development

I am curious to hear more about what you were thinking in that regard.

Lobotomised patients for example probably remained fully cognitive if we are to consider Alex's case by inferrence, but had simply been tortured and abused beyond all emotional tolerance by individuals claiming to be healers. Thus they appeared to lose cognition, and were "cured" of their madness to become a dependent zombie. Well if you treated them in the same fashion and then cut off their arm with a giggle and a court order they may have responded exactly the same way.

Birds are not our ancestors; they are not even lower or less complicated than humans in any meaningful sense. Gould argued that 'They represent good solutions for their own way of life' and they should not be judged by the self-centred notion that one particular primate species (humans) forms a standard for all of life to be judged by.

...One day, in the midst of this (she'd been describing a day when he was tantruming and refusing to give correct answers and turning his back on them all), I'm testing him with a tray of three, four and six blocks of different colors, and I ask, "What color three?" (he's meant to look and see which colour block there is three of, and say the colour) He replies, "Five." At first, I was puzzled: there was no set of five on the tray. We repeat this interaction several times, and he consistently says, "Five." Finally, in frustration, I ask, "OK, what color five?" He says "none"! Not only had he transferred the use of "none" ( from a different context where he had learned what "none" meant) but he had also figured out how to manipulate me into asking him the question he wanted to answer!

I go toa Community Lounge on a big main thru road and huge trucks CRAMMED full of poor bewildered sheep tear past all the time and the stench from these pissing themselves with terror . . .

... Naamah's bit about instant evolution...

Gould argued that 'They represent good solutions for their own way of life' and they should not be judged by the self-centred notion that one particular primate species (humans) forms a standard for all of life to be judged by.

What you described as an extreeme hypothetical actually does happen. Have a google of "Human Sonar", or "Human echolocation".

when they could be learning really cool stuff like that

Sometimes as he's taking the food, I'll attempt to stroke his chest. . the idea being to get him used to being touched, but he won't have a bar of it.

(dunno if it's actually a he)

but that just spun my concept of human superiority around 180 degrees

contemporary neurosurgeons are increasingly arriving at the conclusion the brain is a high adaptive and internally abstract organ perfectly capable of reorganising its function, though the limitations are unknown.

Well for a start the bird just trumped any classical assertion that aberrant behaviour is in any way related to medical psychiatry. That can be good and bad, but it is most definitely a complete turnaround.

Practise does typically lag behind establishment by as much as centuries however.

All the scenery is going to change.

Scientists claim they have discovered how a girl born with half a brain has both fields of vision in one eye.

The 10-year-old, who is from Germany, is able to see with the power of both the left and right eye in a single eye despite the failure of the right hemisphere of her brain to develop in the womb.

Scientists at Glasgow University now believe that the girl's brain rewired itself during its development in the only known case of its kind in the world.

In other cases where patients have half of the brain removed - for example to treat severe epilepsy, one field of vision is lost in both eyes.

This would leave them only able to see objects on the left or right side of their vision. In the case of the German girl, her left and right field vision is almost perfect in one eye.

Scans on the girl showed that retinal nerve fibres which should have gone to the right hemisphere of the brain diverted to the left.

Dr Lars Muckli from the university's Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, said the brain has amazing plasticity.

"We were quite astonished to see just how well the single hemisphere of the brain in this girl has adapted to compensate for the missing half," he said.

"Despite lacking one hemisphere, the girl has normal psychological function and is perfectly capable of living a normal and fulfilling life. She is witty, charming and intelligent."

The girl's underdeveloped brain was discovered when, aged three, she underwent an MRI scan after suffering seizures of brief involuntary twitching on her left side. Apart from the seizures, which were successfully treated, and slight weakness on her left side, the girl has had a normal medical history, attending school and taking part in regular activities.

The study, which also involved researchers in Germany, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA.

They could have and probably did sift through a hundred bird brain responses before airing the desired result.