Betty the crow bends some wire into a hook to retrieve a treat-laden bucket from a well
Posted on 05/07/2009 3:16:09 AM PDT by JoeProBono
"In the past, people thought birds were stupid," laments the aptly named scientist Christopher Bird. But in fact, some of our feathered friends are far cleverer than we might think. And one group in particular - the corvids - has astonished scientists with extraordinary feats of memory, an ability to employ complex social reasoning and, perhaps most strikingly, a remarkable aptitude for crafting and using tools. Some corvids, such as rooks, live in large groups Mr Bird, who is based at the department of zoology at Cambridge University, says: "I would rate corvids as being as intelligent as primates in many ways." The corvids - a group that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies - contain some of the most social species of birds.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Betty the crow bends some wire into a hook to retrieve a treat-laden bucket from a well
I see things all the time that most people have a hard time believing. Green Herons will find something to use for bait, drop it on the water, and wait for a fish to show up. The more I watch, the more I see!
Thoroughly enjoyed the video, thanks. I have a crow...showed up a few weeks ago, must have lost its mother, it’s very young, enjoys several meals every day, takes the food out of our hand, it calls out in the morning to announce itself, and at the end of the day when the sun goes down, it flies away to spend the night in some tall trees about a hundred yards away from the house.
"Crows are bored. They suffer from being too intelligent for their station in life.
"Respectable evolutionary success is simply not, for these brainy and complex birds, enough. They are dissatisfied with the narrow goals and horizons of that tired old Darwinian struggle. On the lookout for a new challenge. Keep that in mind next time you run into a crow. Look the bird in the eye. Consider its frustrations. Try to say something stimulating."
From Natural Acts: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature, by David Quammen.
Aesop observed it, oh, about 2600 years ago.
Charles Kingsley's Water Babies has a wonderful story about crows (he was an amateur naturalist).
Birds can be incredibly bright. When I was a kid we had several crows as pets, and I had a chance to see how smart they are. It’s hard to comprehend how such a tiny brain can be capable of such intelligence.
Those birds posted a lookout in the tree while the others were feeding!
I didn’t know birds did that.
I saw a bird do that while out at lake that year, took me a while to convince my self that what I was seeing was actually happening.
It kept picking up and dropping a minnow hoping for something larger.
Couldn’t tell you what kind of bird it was though.
Never heard of the behavior before.
I’ve watched flocks of geese do that.
They post several lookouts and will wake another to take it’s place when it tires.
I was checking the keyword, “birds” and saw your post about your crow!
If you start a thread, please ping me with updates and pictures!
Would make a nice thread!
Our crow appears to be very young, he limps, seems to have maybe a genetic problem with one foot. We are feeding him several times daily. Hopefully he will grow stronger and soon fly away...
Ask Slings and Arrows to put you on her Kitty Ping list. That’s where we tell our animal stories mostly.
I don’t know if she’s a she or a he...hehe.
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