More Than Mindless Machines

Scientific researchers have been shocked to learn how smart animals are:

Speaking of crow intelligence, Alex Kacelnik, a professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Oxford in England, noted the "master tool user of the avian world," the New Caledonian crow.

These birds have been shown to not just use tools, but to make their own by twisting and bending pieces of wire to fish food from places they couldn't reach otherwise.

That belief that animals were mindless machines was an intellectual theory, descended from Descartes. Everyday people had always inclined to the opinion that animals possessed some form of awareness.

I'm not saying that Aristotle understood animals perfectly. But he understood them better than Descartes did.

Birds have no words,
but it's plain they have brains.