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Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

bbc.com

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Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#411

Post by klyrs »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #329
User23 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a crow steal a credit card off an outdoor table in Seattle once. They really are remarkable animals. Also I swear they have regional accents to their calls.

> Also I swear they have regional accents to their calls. Its actually true they do this. Two noted ornithologist's describes it in one of their books on crows: As ornithologist John M. Marzluff and author Tony Angell noted in their 2005 book In the Company of Crows and Ravens, the calls these birds use "vary regionally, like human dialects that can vary from valley to valley." And there's more: If a crow changes its…

I live in an area that's got crows and ravens -- the ravens don't come into the city much, except for large forested parks. The crows in such parks have a few calls similar to the ravens. To me, it sounds like a rural dialect -- which is reinforced by my observations that crows don't seem to talk like that in noisier parts of the city.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#412

Post by birracerveza »

zozbot234 wrote: post #368
perl4ever wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me think, what is a jackdaw? Turns out...it's a kind of crow.

Here's the thing. You said a "jackdaw is a kind of crow." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that. Ask someone who is a scientist who studies crows, and he'll tell you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be specific, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing. If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which include…

Please stop spreading this bullshit on HN and go back to Reddit.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#413

Post by fl0wenol »

Gupie wrote: post #73

A couple of years ago we were holidaying in Kent, UK, and went for a walk on the South Downs. There was a guy in a hide shooting crows. He was at the edge of a field and had put some sort of lure in the middle of the field. Crows would fly down and he would shoot them. There were thirty or so dead birds grouped around the lure, but the crows continued to fly down, and continued to get shot. This makes me think that c…

All he was accomplishing was thinning the herd of the dumb ones. He's going to be responsible one day for The Incident.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#414

Post by csorrell »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #107
coldtea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's no need for this comment, the mock-indignation on behalf of others. A funny aside is always welcome in an otherwise substantial comment, and no, this is not considered racism or offending by 99% of Earth's population, including most Irish.

Saying something displaying a certain behavior makes them seem like a certain race is racism, even if you don't find it offensive.

it's an Irish joke, that speaks the the Irish sense of humor. Irish people will jab at the Irish way all day long. It's really not offensive; certainly not as offensive as someone else coming along and deciding to be offended on others' behalf. lighten up.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#415

Post by dghughes »

hailk wrote: post #344
derefr wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. Tangent: this is a handy effect, if you could get it to work, but it’s a bit surprising if it did work: animals have different audible frequency ranges, and, obviously, they’ll only respond to a name they can hear. Dogs and c…

Also, cats aren't as social as either dogs or crows (collaborative hunting wise). Cats not coming when summoned is a very common thing, even when they recognise their names.

Cats will come over to you if you squat down, it happens almost instantly. In cat world I guess the human being low means you're nice.

Cats are heavily into patterns. My family always had cats and you could see how they craved for everything to be in order. You come home at 5pm, you eat at 6, you watch TV at 7pm, you turn off the TV at 10:35pm, you brush your teeth at 10:40pm and on and on. Cats know and expect your routine to be the same and they seem to love that.

My elderly parents' cat puts my father to bed. Then she goes off to her favourite sleeping spot. My dad's brother comes to visit at 2pm and the cat gets ready for the visit by coming to sit by the chair before my uncle arrives.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#416

Post by zentiggr »

jayd16 wrote: post #118
burtonator wrote: post #6

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…

Gulls are pretty smart too. I've seen a flock case out a tourist as they set up their beach blanket. Once the tourist turns their back, they swoop in. I've seen a one pull a closed brown lunch bag out of a freshly opened backpack, meaning the knew backpacks probably have food and brown bags are worth stealing and inspecting in detail elsewhere.

My wife grew up here in IL, we were visiting New England where I grew up and spent a day on Hampton Beach, her, I, and my daughter.

They started a game of using McD's french fries as lures to get the beach gulls to swoop in on unsuspecting kids as they were playing... sometimes 20 or 30 gulls at a time.

Felt like dropping spotter rounds for airstrikes.

(No children were harmed, just many french fries tossed instead of consumed.)

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#417

Post by ulises314 »

I once was eating peanuts in a park and throwing some to nearby squirrels, I saw a small crow picking some I looked him in the eye and threw one at him, aimed to land about half a meter in front of him, he immediately understood what I was doing and flew towards me, caught the peanut in mid air and flew away.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#419

Post by zentiggr »

tjchear wrote: post #78
seszett wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair though, birds have had to adapt long ago to evaluating the movement of very fast moving objects, while rabbits and most mammals have not really had to cope with fast speeds until humans invented cars just a century ago.

Predators like lions and cheetahs achieve top speeds comparable to a car driving on freeway tho.

But that's ambush style... cover, creep, approach, then burst, startle, takedown. Or go hungry.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#420

Post by uhtred »

ethbro wrote: post #305
state_less wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Nepal having breakfast. Some crows are sitting there watching me eat. I look down to read my book, and in not more than a few seconds, I hear the clinking of dishes. I look up and the crows are flying off with my toast and jam. It was right in front of me, but they were quick enough to get in and out before I could react. I realized that they are probably aware of my lack of attention to my food and that the…

I sat and watched a raven (majestic and BIG, if you've never seen one) at Yellowstone Park for a few minutes. It was a big parking lot outside the gift shop, and some visitor had parked his motorcycle there. Pannier bags on the back. The raven was sitting on one bag, actively working the zipper open. About a foot of zipper. Which is pretty impressive, but the more impressive thing was how . It would worry it for a co…

Does level of intelligence determine how much respect you give something then?
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