Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

I hate these birds

Crows are social too, will hold a grudge... you's swear they were part Irish.

A crow once sneaked quite far into my mechanic's shop without being seen, got up on a rolling toolbox and stole a bag of sunflower seeds without being noticed. I found this because I saw a crow and their other crow buddies were having a sunflower seed party in the alley, and one of the mechanics lost their snack.

Also, crows will remember if you help them for years. People make a point to make friends with them because they have been known to bring gifts and visit year after year. Probably better company than the in-laws too. There's a number of documentaries and personal videos on YouTube about this topic.

PS: Davis CA has zillions of crows. An apartment I rented had large trees at the street containing easily several thousand in a dozen trees where they bedded-down for the night. The sidewalks and streets were coated white with droppings like it was SF's Fisherman's Wharf. Needless to say, no one used those sidewalks. And you could hear when they came back, because it sounded like a crow cocktail party.

Crows are amazingly intelligent animals.

My GF and I went to the beach about a month ago and took our dog.

The crows weren't frightened at ALL of our dog. They realized they could basically just 'float' up in the air when he came by using the breeze.

The fact that they were amazingly calm about it was really telling.

Second. We hid our stuff under a blanket. They realize it's still there as they have item persistence. So they lifted up the blanket, went into our bag, then started opening up everything.

They opened up lids. They went through my girlfriends purse. They took out all the items from her purse. They took the socks out of my shoes. They opened plastic containers.

They systematically went through all our belongings.

And BOY did they score. All our dogfood. All of our leftover lunch, etc.

Yeap. Food and valuables have to be toddler-proofed around crows. They can also steal your wallet or your keys if you leave them unsecured.

And, damn, they're as good as human thieves at reading situations for opportunism.

Birds' intelligence is especially interesting because the ontogeny differs from that of primates and other mammals like the dolphins. Maybe it can help triangulate our views about intelligence and give parallax insight into what general intelligence is and what to expect of AI without resorting to anthropocentric Turing test arguments only.