Research

My research attempts to pinpoint how humans and other animals (including corvids and sharks) think, in order to understand how intelligence evolves. I am also highly interested in the evolution of religious thought.

My new PNAS paper on causal reasoning in New Caledonian crow is out here. Here is the explanation of this study on Youtube:

And here are two articles discussing this research at Science and 10000birds.com.

Publications

Taylor A. H., Miller R., & Gray R.D. (in press) New Caledonian crows reason about hidden causal agents. PNAS

Taylor, A.H & Clayton N S. (in press) Evidence from convergent evolution and causal reasoning suggests that conclusions on human uniqueness may be premature. BBS.

Taylor A.H., Elliffe E, Hunt, G.R., Emery N.J., Clayton N.S., Gray R.D. 2011 New Caledonian crows learn the functional properties of novel tool types PloS One 6 (12), e26887. Download pdf

Taylor, A.H., Hunt, G. & Gray R.D 2011 Context dependent tool use in New Caledonian crows. Biol Letts. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0782. Download pdf

Medina, F. S. Taylor, A.H., Hunt, G. & Gray R.D 2011 New Caledonian crows’ responses to mirrors Anim. Behav. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.07.033. Download pdf

Holzhaider, J.C, Sibley, M. D., Taylor, A.H., Singh, P. J., Gray, R.D.,  & Hunt, G.R. 2010 The social structure of New Caledonian crows. Anim. Behav. 81, 83-92. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H., Elliffe, D., Hunt, G. & Gray R.D 2010 Complex cognition and behavioural innovation in New Caledonian crows, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 277: 2637–2643. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H., Medina, F., Holzhaider, J.C., Hearne, L., Hunt, G.R. and Gray, R.D. (2010). An investigation into the cognition behind spontaneous string pulling in New Caledonian crows. PLoS One 5, e9345. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H. and Gray, R.D. (2009). Animal cognition: Aesop’s fable flies from fiction to fact. Current Biology 19, R731-R732. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H., Hunt, G. R., Roberts R. & Gray, R. D. 2009b Causal reasoning in New Caledonian crows: ruling out spatial analogies and sampling error. Comm. Integ. Biol. 2, 311-312. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H., Hunt, G. R., Medina, F. S. & Gray, R. D. 2009a Do New Caledonian crows solve physical problems through causal reasoning? Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 276, 247-254. Download pdf

Taylor, A. H.., Hunt, G. R., Holzhaider, J. C. & Gray, R. D. 2007 Spontaneous metatool use by New Caledonian crows. Curr. Biol. 17, 1504-1507. Download pdf

Press coverage:

Clever Crows, Complex Cognition?
Clever New Caledonian crows can use three tools
In praise of… the New Caledonian crow
Crows make monkeys out of chimps in mental test
Brainy crows finally stumped by intelligence test
Crows wield tools with human-like skill
Cleverest crows opt for two tools
Crows are the Einsteins of the animal world