Why Did Consciousness Evolve? Exciting Research on Bird Brains

I know this is the low tier answer scientifically speaking, but it seems pretty obvious to anyone whos ever had a pet that most animals are definitely conscious

I find it fascinating that some people don't believe other animals are conscious.

I train horses, and herding dogs. But got the shock of my life when we got our first bird… a one ounce, tiny Pacific Parrotlet. 30+ years of animal training, but within day one “training” this tiny bird (4 months age), he learned everything I planned on training for the next many months.😮 He’s 10 now, and by far the most intelligent creature here. He also talks 🫣 which is ofc not about meaning of the words, but his associative learning is off the charts. And I swear he calls the cat just to annoy the dog. 😁 His favorite phrases are “it’s not rocket science” and, “you got this.”

Crows actually mourn the death of other crows. That gather around the dead crow and hold a vigil.

it bothers me how far we believe we are removed from nature.

12:27 There was a documentary on PBS once called 'A Murder of Crows' that dealt with their intelligence and self awareness. For over a year, a research team observed a murder, which is what a flock of crows is called, that lived in an inner city area. What was seen was astonishing. Among many things, they had learned to collect large walnuts from a city park and then land on the supports at intersections that traffic signals were attached to. They would watch the signal, and when it turned green, they would drop the nuts in front of cars so that the cars would run over them and crack them open. They watched children sliding down a hill on the sleds, and mimicked the same behavior after the children left by sliding down the same hill on their backs. What was amazing was that even though they could fly back up the hill, they chose to walk back up to the top.

i just watched my 9 week old kitten's mind get blown when she saw my hand come out from under the blanket and she finally put 2 and 2 together. She looked back and forth from my hand to where she was attacking it under the blanket, her jaw dropped, then stared off into space recalling all the times she'd attacked it, mind totally blown.

Once, in my early twenties, i found a baby robin that i guess had fallen from its nest. My girlfriend and I finished raising it, and one day we took this little bird outside to introduce it to wild berries. We were inbetween two apartment buildings, and one of us noticed that a bunch of other robins had congregated above us, watching. Eventually a few of them even dropped down to ground level and got pretty close to us, while we fed the little one. It was crazy surreal. That whole experience was eye opening for me. Birds are way more intelligent than i had realized. That bird hung around that summer, every now and then he'd fly over to me and land on my shoulder. We got video of it once. It was incredible.

I have had a crow making barking sounds to tell me that a dog was approaching us. I give the local crows in my cemetery some peanuts on regular basis. And it was during one of the feedings that a crow looked at me and made baring sounds. It could just had grab the nuts and fly off, but it totally ignored the nuts and seemed focus on telling me that a dog was approaching us. That blew my mind completely. I believe that it must count as a conscious behavior.

Philosophy can't be kept out from other sciences, because science necessarily operates on - often unconscious- presumptions.