How would you answer the question: “What is the smartest bird on the planet?” Although measuring avian intelligence can be challenging due to the diverse ways birds solve problems and adapt to their environments, scientists and researchers all agree that the crow is the most intelligent bird in the animal kingdom. Before I get into the reasoning behind that decision, let’s learn a little about the American crows.
With a range covering nearly all of the lower 48 states, barring the southwestern deserts, the American crow is a familiar sight. They are very adaptable and you’ll find them in urban, suburban and rural areas. Distinguished by its glossy black feathers that shimmer iridescently, it possesses long legs and a sturdy, straight bill. Adults typically measure between 16 and 21 inches in length, about 40% of which is tail, and weigh approximately one pound. These intelligent birds are omnivores with a remarkably broad diet, consuming natural foods like worms, insects, seeds, and fruit, but also scavenging trash and carrion, and opportunistically preying on baby birds from nests.
Young American crows don’t breed until they are at least 2 years old but most don’t breed until they are at least 4 years old. They are territorial and will defend their nests and foraging areas.
Crows are monogamous and their lifespan is between 7 and 15 years. Interestingly, they hold funerals for their dead. When a crow sees a fellow dead crow, it will send out a loud call to the other crows. The group will then perform aerial maneuvers and vocalizations at the “funeral”.
Due to their intelligence, crows have demonstrated remarkable memory skills. They can identify and remember individual faces and associate them with positive or negative experiences. They effectively communicate these occasions to others in their murder (a flock of crows), who may then collectively react to the person involved. An experiment at the University of Washington proved this to be true. Wearing masks, researchers captured and banded 75 crows. No harm was done to the crows but the birds did not like being caught. For the next 3 years, the researchers would wear the masks outside to see if the crows would react. They certainly did. The researchers were scolded, mobbed, dive-bombed and pooped on by the crows.
One 8-year-old girl in Seattle learned all about the intelligence of crows when her kindness to them was reciprocated. Gabi Mann would leave food out for the crows on a daily basis and soon the birds began to anticipate the daily treats. She was pleasantly surprised when the crows began reciprocating by leaving gifts for Gabi. She got an assortment of small items that would fit in a crow’s mouth like buttons, paper clips, screws, and even a rotting crab claw!
Here are just a few other examples that demonstrate the intelligence of crows:
• They’ve been observed bending materials like sticks and wire to retrieve food from small spaces. Alex Taylor, a lecturer at the University of Auckland, was stunned when he watched a New Caledonian crow named Betty make a hook from a piece of wire to pull some food from a tube.
• Crows will drop rocks into a container to raise the water level in order to reach floating food.
• Their problem-solving skills were observed when they waited for the red light before retrieving food on the street.
• The Magnuson Children’s Garden watched as one crow taught other crows how to use tools.
• Crows have been tested with various puzzles and have been able to solve them.
Until recently, it was believed that only humans could recognize and differentiate shapes based on geometric regularity. “Claiming that it is specific to us humans, that only humans can detect geometric regularity, is now falsified,” says Andreas Nieder, a cognitive neurobiologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Two tamed crows were shown a computer screen with 6 shapes. In order to get a tasty treat, they had to peck at the shape that was different. The example she gave was 5 moons and 1 flower. Pretty obvious, right? She gradually made the experiment harder. In the end, she showed the crows 4 perfect squares and one shape that very closely resembled a square. It had only one slightly different part. Could they pick it out? Absolutely!
In the journal Science Advances, researchers explain that crows clearly have a sense of right angles, parallel lines, and symmetry. Not even baboons could do it even though they are so much closer in intelligence to us.
While we watch the skies for signs of intelligence, sometimes we overlook the brilliance that lives among us. We’re discovering remarkable minds right here on Earth. Crows remind us that intelligence wears many faces and is not a uniquely human trait.
If the full content does not display, visit the article originally published on this site
