Crows or Humans?

In The Colbert Report, Colbert states that humans are far more productive than any animals on this planet, and he conform that statement by showing a video of kittens sleeping which he had watched on YouTube while working. However, he then exposes a video of an experiment that shows a crow using sticks of smaller sizes to reach the longer sticks in the tubes. The crow uses these tools to reach a treat, which it does at the end. He expresses excitement and is shocked by the outcome. Colbert does not understand how crows are so intelligent, but Big Bird still needs help counting to then. He uses the technique incongruity by involving a character from a children's television show. After, he uses the technique parody by taking part in the same experiment and testing his "intelligence" and if he,as a human, has the capability to reach the treat, a peanut M&M. Colbert pretends to be confused and tries to acquire the chocolate covered treat by putting his "chubby" fingers in the long tubes, which "surprisingly" do not fit. At that fails, he puts the tube in his mouth and tries to reach the treat with his tongue; and finally he realizes that he needs to use the tools in order to eat the M&M. Therefore, he picks up a hammer from his desk, which is not part of the experiment, and smashes the tube; however, due to such force the M&M bounces of the table and is lost. Nevertheless, Colbert is actually quite calm, because he decides to simply open a whole bag of M&M's and to stuff them down his throat. Throughout this whole process Colbert uses the satirizing technique, reversal. A human who is known to be the most intelligent organism on plane Earth cannot complete a simply task that is easily done by a crow. On the other hand, Colbert also uses the technique, ambiguity because the way he talks about the video can come off as sarcastic. He makes it seem as if though the experiment is entirely ridiculous and serves no purpose whatsoever. Furthermore, he lastly uses the technique, knaves and fools. He represents how humans can either focus on the most pointless things and how we have the tendency to take the easy way, and not actually think before we do. The target to this satire is the human race, and he is trying to prove how despite the fact we are extremely intelligent animals, we never fail to make fools of ourselves. Lastly, his purpose is to help people understand that it is embarrassing for animals to have more common sense than them. Also, due to his ambiguity, his other purpose may to portray how humans waste time by focusing on nonsense experiments.

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-january-31-2013-matthew-guerrieri