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Who's the smartest corvid?

thetyee.ca

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#31
Thanks to Merlin Bird ID, I've got rather into birds in the past few years. We have a robin and blackbird that hang out in the garden with us, seemingly unafraid. A couple of months back I bought a camera feeder [0] but we've still only had three bird types that visit - a coal tit who comes fairly infrequently but moves so fast the camera could easily be missing him, some amazing jackdaws who seem to take turns on the feeder, and some Eurasian magpies who are absolute fucking arseholes. I made the mistake of putting a mealworm / seed mix in the feeder once, and the mealworms were so prized by the magpies that they worked out how to empty it completely within minutes of me filling it, throwing all the seed that they weren't interested in on the floor. I've stopped putting mealworms in it now, but now they empty it just to make sure there's none in there. I'm going to have to take it down and try to fashion some kind of grate to make it much harder to get the seeds out.

[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.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#32
post #31

Thanks to Merlin Bird ID, I've got rather into birds in the past few years. We have a robin and blackbird that hang out in the garden with us, seemingly unafraid. A couple of months back I bought a camera feeder [0] but we've still only had three bird types that visit - a coal tit who comes fairly infrequently but moves so fast the camera could easily be missing him, some amazing jackdaws who seem to take turns on th…

Oh, and my other favourite corvid story - there's a guy that walks three very old dogs in my local park and he occasionally throws tiny treats down for them as they walk around. Crows started following him around the park for the treats the dogs missed, so then he started feeding them to the crows too, and now he walks slowly around the park with 3 old dogs and about 5 crows ambling along with him all in a fairly tight little group. I love crows.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#33

Wonderful timing. Me and my daughter just started to feed and befriend a crow in our backyard. We started by putting out a few pieces of cat foot, shaking the plastic container and tapping on the table we put it on to signal to the crow we had put out food. Within only 2 days the crow has learned to come and swoop down for his meal within just a minute or two after he does his normal fly-by passes. Now only about 5 d…

> My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda.

Coins? Screw that. Go right to bills.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#35

Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat ) has shown me there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way). Bi…

I started doing this with my cat. It's easy to try to explain away the underlying thought processes as coincidental association, and some of that is certainly true, but experiencing it first hand with a cat you know well is certainly different. My cat presses a button for his name when he wants attentions, buttons for outside, food, water. A button for YouTube (the startup sound), since he likes watching other cats and critter videos and nature documentaries on there. I was working in the other room during a stormy day and he was watching some nature video when I heard him repeatedly pressing the YouTube button and his name. But he was already watching it? When I went out there, I saw there was a video playing with a cat that looked almost exactly like him on the screen. He seemed extremely interested. Did he think it was him? Or was he just calling attention that it looked like him and wanted to tell me? Either way, never saw that behavior before or after.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#36
post #12

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

I remember reading an article in National Geographic of how crow's brains are much more interconnected than is the norm in mammals, i.e. IIRC they have a higher density of synapses between neurons. From that article, it seems that the usual brain weight vs. body weight to determine intelligence, which seems can be used to approximate intelligence in different species of mammals, cannot be used for birds (or at least…

I've read there's also a social aspect - crows are extremely social creatures, as are humans, and other highly intelligent animals like whales. That does seem to be a common denominator.

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.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#37

Wonderful timing. Me and my daughter just started to feed and befriend a crow in our backyard. We started by putting out a few pieces of cat foot, shaking the plastic container and tapping on the table we put it on to signal to the crow we had put out food. Within only 2 days the crow has learned to come and swoop down for his meal within just a minute or two after he does his normal fly-by passes. Now only about 5 d…

> My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda. Coins? Screw that. Go right to bills.

bills are fragile, bitcoin might be better long-term.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#38

Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat ) has shown me there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way). Bi…

Who's a pretty boy?

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#39

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

I've seen crows pick up walnuts and drop them in front of moving cars so the tires will open them. I had heard that they will do that, but it was still something to see it happen.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#40

If you like the idea of smart corvids, Adrian Tchaikovsky's scifi novel "The Children of Memory" is a fun read. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...

And the just released “Palaces of The Crow” by Ray Nayler. I just finished it — really moving but also a brutal read in parts (c.f. because of what humans will do to each other not crows)

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.

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