81–90 of 104 posts
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That's a sure sign you are watching ravens, not crows. Ravens can play together in the air in ways crows never do.
Ravens are apparently one of the smartest animals.[1] [1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/ravens-problem-s...
Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature. Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The m…
Scott Alexander has a good post on bird intelligence here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/25/neurons-and-intelligen... Though they have much smaller brains, there is evidence to suggest that their brains are 10x more computationally dense.
Crazy to see this posted today. Last night my wife and I were on a reservation in Arizona and watching the birds. She googled this very topic. Then when I looked at HN today, here it is! I showed it to her and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Is Facebook listening to me?” Then I had to explain that HN is human-powered and the chances of Big G and Facebook and HN sharing data is pretty close to zero.
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This video of a crow repeatedly "skiing" down a roof changed my view of how animals play - I thought it was all "practice-fighting" but this crow seems to be playing "just for the fun of it". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
This is a hooded crow hammering / trying to kill what probably thinks is a prey. Seems more frustrated than happy. The easiest crow to identify in Europe, being gray and black.
I think the entire corvid family is fascinating. They are extremely intelligent. Some of them not only use tools but actually make tools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence
Corvids don’t just have the capacity for making and using tools but also metatool use, i.e., using one tool on another [0]. In this respect their cognition apparently exceeds many species of primates. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...
Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature. Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The m…
For me, it was watching them play for hours outside the office. Sometimes a pair would fly together for awhile, then one would dive at the other, who would flip over at the last instant. There was no reason for them to do this; they just had enough free time to screw around.
A bigger challenge is to differentiate a Northwestern Crow from an American Crow. > It is smaller than the American Crow and has a more nasal call, but it is so similar that the two may in fact be the same species. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northwestern_Crow/overvi... I didn't even realize that my area had an apparently different crow than everywhere until I bought a birding book.
Actually, recent research indicates that these two species began differentiating themselves a long time ago, but their lineages have since converged: they now interbreed freely and there's no reliable way to tell the two species apart: https://twitter.com/dlslager/status/1072353359041085440 It's been really interesting to talk to birders I trust about this. The rough consensus is, most people think they're the same s…
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Scott Alexander has a good post on bird intelligence here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/25/neurons-and-intelligen... Though they have much smaller brains, there is evidence to suggest that their brains are 10x more computationally dense.
Birds are on a better process.