It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, a pretty sizable rock smacked the pavement next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. If it had hit my head I would have been hurt. I finally look up and see a big crow staring directly down at me - it had dropped it from the power lines, it had seemingly been intentional, maybe as a warning, I don't know. I attributed it to malice towards the vagrants that harass them.
I was amazed at how much intelligence it would take to 1) form a grudge 2) form intent to threaten/harm, 3) formulate a plan using a weapon with cause -> effect to execute intent, 4) wait for opportunity.
I have observed a lot of very intelligent behaviors from these birds but that was the wildest one. I have seen it happen once since, so I'm convinced it isn't an accident.
Crows have also been known to alert predators like wolves to easy prey so they can pick the remains.
Meanwhile another crow flies in, picks up a gosling by the neck (i swear there wasn't much difference in size, unreal to see) and flies off with it.
I could see the whole thing coming, was remarkable.
In other words, they seem to achieve better results with smaller brains than we thought. And yes, crows (in EU) do exhibit some pretty intelligent behavior.
Intelligence seems to have evolved three times on this planet - mammals, corvids, and octopuses. Octopuses have a distributed system rather than one central brain. They all have neurons, but the higher level architecture differs drastically.
Knowing that several different architectures can work is important for AI. There's apparently more than one way to do it.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521...
Regarding that, I'm reminded of another story - on my daily walk near work, there was a dead crow on the pavement. 5 or so crows were standing all around it, doing nothing really. Even me passing close by did not trigger them to fly away or anything, it seemed like they were standing watch on the body. The next day, it was still there, same thing. The 3rd day, it was gone, but the crows were still standing watch in the same manner. I didn't know what to make of it other than it appeared they were mourning or taking part in some type of ingroup ritual. I didn't see it again after that, but it struck me.
tl;dr, the higher cognitive abilities of birds are centered in a different region of the brain compared to mammals, the pallium vs the cortex. Neuron density in the bird pallium is also higher than the comparable density in the mammalian cortex.
[0] Developmental origins and evolution of pallial cell types and structures in birds https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5182
https://www.aaas.org/membership/member-spotlight/scientist-j...
Ravens are wonderful creatures.
Then, once we noticed a weird nut near the bowl of peanuts. Not sure what type it was, a buckeye I think.
Oddly, we’ve been feeding them for 6 years now and no other gifts!
Someone pondered a correlation between intelligence and some notion of “evil”. I personally believe empathy and altruism are highly connected to intelligence, and the act of giving a gift to another is suggestive of both attributes.
There are also examples of altruism in other species not frequently considered intelligent. Vampire bats will regurgitate food to share with others, even if they are not tied by familial bonds and even if there’s no other tangential benefit to the individual giving up its own nutrition. We have also recently observed female tigers caring for and protecting another female’s cubs while she feeds, which is novel behavior to observe in typically solitary tigers.
It is interesting that e.g. "Coyote time" was copied into platform games but in real life if you're not stood on solid ground you fall immediately 'cos Mother Nature doesn't give a shit what's more fun.
There is something about intelligence that seems to carry a degree of... moral responsibility, somehow? Though in reality it's just an animal eating another animal, as ever.
In the end, I think a gazelle doesn’t look up at the lion that killed it by outrunning it and the snapping its neck and say “Ah well, got me fair and square!”
Humane hunting is mostly something that only a rich old guy with his night vision goggles and sniper rifle can afford.
Even for farm animals, many cultures perform their sacrifice in ghastly ways.
One thing I didn’t not really account for is that now in the morning when I step outside our new friend really lays on the noises of excitement as he knows a meal is about to be served.
A couple years ago I was doing this and they brought me a chicken head as a gift. Thanks... I guess?
Coins? Screw that. Go right to bills.
I leave shelled peanuts and other bird feed out in the winter, and is fascinating to watch the crows and magpies to crack them open, feed on some of them, then grab two shelled peanuts and fly off with them. They already recognize me coming out in the winter mornings with the bird feed and peanut bags. They wait patiently in the surrounding trees until I'm in the house again. They even see me through the windows watching them and only come down to feed once I am out of sight for them. Truly remarkable.
We also have some pairs of red kites in our area which circle over our fields for prey. The crows don't like them and will try to chase them away, mostly in packs of two to three crows. They are 99% successful in chasing the red kites away because they are more agile in the air and can do more complex flight manouvers. But once one of the crows got to close to the claws of the kite and was killed instantly and dropped down dead. What happened then was even more fascinating. The whole flock of crows gathered around their dead companion and maybe "mourned"? I don't know how to else explain it.
Next winter I will try to befriend them even more, they are so fascinating!
Very clever!
This one is feeding a dog: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s
Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0
There was a video on youtube about a crow coming to a human and making that sound, also in winter with snow; commenters agreed that it was probably thirsty and was imitating running water that way to get the human to give it water. The human in the video didn't get that. But here in the end we can see the crow eating snow, which may confirm that it is really a way for crows tell when they are thirsty? Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" might be just testing the owl's capabilities for checking whether killing the owl to drink its blood would be an option? (I guess melting snow for water is increasing the risk for the crow to be cold & run out of energy.)
I wonder if they're just amusing themselves (by being little jerks.)
One day in early spring, I thought I heard a Red Tail Hawk screeching in a tree directly above me. I stood back, searching for it. I never spotted it despite the leaves barely out on the tree. But I did spot a Blue Jay hopping around some lower branches.
When I got home I looked up Blue Jay behavior and found that they do imitate the calls of Red Tail Hawks, among others.
[0] https://naturespy.org - not the best resolution, but plenty good enough for up close video of the birds. I did a fair bit of research and loved the fact that these guys are a social enterprise who put their profits back into conservation projects. Highly recommended.
Birds have higher neural density than mammals (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) so can pack a lot into their tiny heads. I do wonder what they'd have to say, if given the chance.
The fact is that humans are exceedingly quick to find patterns in random data (e.g. horescopes, any form of divination), and that tendency gets amplified when the opportunity to anthropomorphize a cute animal is presented.
That cuckoo gets my vote for cleverest.
Crow White is a hell of a name. Bravo to their parents.
So it is entirely possible that they went "I think I will take the name Crow White, that's hilarious" and a PhD later they're a professor running research on corvids.
Edited to add mention of cultural convention to change names on marriage.
The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both.
Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one.
The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way.
They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell.
Fascinating.
They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241392678
> In Ray Nayler's speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl.
They hold court over their juvelines and enforce behaviour, and they mourn the passing of members of the community.
I think it's possible the niche encourages large brains. A bit of nature not nurture maybe.
They are tool users. And they can teach offspring lessons learned from humans, and recognize friend and foe. Well mostly: cyclists are routinely mis-cast as foe no matter what. This is why Australian cyclists look like demented wheelie porcupines: cable ties on the helmet keep the eye-peckers at bay.
Last year during fledging season their baby was near the side of the road, in the grass looking lost/hurt/exhausted, so some kind but misguided passers-by (it’s normal, they kick ‘em out of the nest to try and make them fly) picked it up and were going to take it to a wildlife hospital. Mum was watching them from a tree, quite distressed.
I persuaded them I’d look after it and get help if needed, and took the baby back up to the house, then sat down outside and tried to give it back. Baby was by this point clutching my hand and nestling in to me. Mum wandered up, took a look at me holding her kid and I could almost imagine her saying “Ah, yeah you look after him for a while then, I need a break” because she seemed to relax, then went back to the other adults and had a feed before coming back for him!
HN's comments include quite a few longer & better ones.
Also they cache food they don't eat, they hide it, cover with leaves and make sure nobody is watching them, they act very casual. I am not sure if they remember the locations though.
Compared to ravens they have smaller head but I believe it is because they spend so much time near people (at least here in Europe you don't see ravens in cities, they are afraid,for historical reasons, of people and low in numbers) they get smarter and more crafty.
I can recommend a great book about corvids with beautiful illustrations: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122558/in-the-company...
