Spent the evening watching an animal documentary on WDR. It examined and compared the intelligence of human kids, monkeys and birds by exposing them to similar experiments.

E.g in one, they put some food on one side in a horizontal pipe which has a “trap” in the middle and provide some stick for pushing the food.
Small kids will frequently push the food in the trap and don’t get anything. Older ones recognize the trap and push the food in the right direction, avoiding the trap. The monkey succeeded first in pushing it right. However, in another attempt he pushed it into the trap… he then took a screw driver and just unscrewed the pipe from its fixation and shook the food out of the pipe. Great! The bird would take a stick in its peak and pull the food out of the pipe. It nearly fell into the trap in one attempt and you could see how the bird stopped, let the stick go and went around the (glass) pipe to examine the situation (it succeeded in “lifting” the food over the trap in the end).

Another experiment involved self recognition in the mirror. Interesting program!