dromaeosaurid intelligence

["James Farlow" <farlow@IPFW.EDU>]

To add to Tom Holtz's comments about the smarts of dromaeosaurids:

To the best of my knowledge, nobody who works on dinosaur brains or thinks 
about dinosaur intelligence (whatever that may be) thinks Deinonychus et al. 
would have been any smarter than present-day birds, if they were even that 
clever.  I am right now writing up my experimental study of footprint formation 
by emus, so I've been recalling my experiences with said beasts and other 
ground birds.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that dromaeosaurids were as smart as 
emus.

Based on my experience with emus, this means that, to take a scene from JP1, a 
person wouldn't have to worry about dromaeosaurids figuring out how to turn 
door knobs to get at tasty preteens hiding in a room.  The really interesting 
question would be this:  Given an open doorway with no obstruction, would a 
dromaeosaurid be able to walk through without slamming into the wall on either 
side of the door?

Back to number-crunching.