Corvids in general are a very intelligent species of bird. No wonder they’ve populated all continents other than antarctica.The list of birds in the family Corvidae are a long list of crows, ravens, jays and magpies.Today i'll only be talking about one family in the corvidae tree, Corvus.Corvus has the three big hitters in terms of intelligence, Crows, Ravens, and Rooks.
I'll start with rooks, rooks are lesser known but are essentially european and western asian crows, research studies have demonstrated that rooks can do so in cognition tests, where tools are required, and can rival, and in some circumstances outperform, chimpanzees.But that's the lower tier of the corvids intelligence.
Something most people don't know is that Ravens team up with Wolves and pack bond with cubs to keep the lineage going the spiel is that the ravens lead the wolf pack to a more recent kill, or a smaller, sickly herd just waiting to be turned into wolf calories.in return the raven gets the leftovers. More importantly the bits and pieces that the wolves deem to be insignificant
Crows were my original topic to think of and how they are of basic human intelligence. Crows fill an interesting niche in a mix of active predation, waste management and keeping the balance. One perplexing situation is that in urbanized Japan crows have learned the bus, train and garbage collection times to snag food from unsuspecting people and waste disposal. They are smart enough to drop handfuls of nuts on the street, wait for the walk symbol to pop up and collect the goods.
Crows, unlike ravens who are mainly solitary, act in mobs, no joke ,mobs.The reason is so that they can collect information and spread the wealth like we do. They actively do what we do. learn a skill, teach it to others and the cycle continues.
There are crows in New Caledonia, living in primary forest. It inhabits only the main island, Grande Terre, and one of the Loyalty Islands, Maré Island that has zero woodpeckers. Could you guess what the crows in New Caledonia have been doing? Modifying sticks to help reach bugs in cracks and crevices. The tools are sticks trimmed and tweaked to have a hook and are even semi-self healing because of how the wear and tear works.
Corvids are just so fascinating to me because they (with the exception of pigeons for some reason) are the only non-mammal vertebrates to pass the mirror test. They can identify that the being in the mirror is them and it will mimic their movements. Most pets can't even do that and either end up attacking the mirror or get scared of themselves.
Why do YOU believe they have a poor reputation?
How do you think the traits and skills are passed between different crow cultures?
why do you think these skills were adapted other than for survival: would they be useless in a different habitat?
Replies
They are badly looked upon because how they are protrayed in the everyday world. We think of them as bad luck and signs of grief. But in reality they are just very smart birds that have skills that were passed on or maybe they picked it up from other birds. We need to look passed what is bad about them and just take in the fact that they are intelligent birds.
i like how you brought up the greif/ bad omen aspect of crows. the original veiw of corvids were in viking era where they believed Quote
Ravens appear in various contexts within Norse sagas, often as symbols of war, wisdom, and prophecy. Apart from Odin's two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, ravens are featured in several other Norse texts and stories, reflecting their significant role in Norse culture and mythology.
mostly positive
i really think that the birds just had a really bad reputation because they were protrayed in movies as really annoying and bad but i truly think that the birds were smart and had good atitudes they were just hated on because of so many movies.
Poor Reputation-I did'nt know they had a bad reputation.
Skillz-I think the reason that these skillz have been found in multiple crow cultures could be because they are just really smart birds, and great minds think alike.
I don't think that the birds taking food from a humans trash and picking up crosswalk food would be very useful for the birds living in the woods.
I think these birds have a bad reputation because they have always been used in movies or shows in a negative way. I believe they have smart skills as they have had to adapt and survive over the years.
pop culture can make or break a species people or even a specidfic way of life, mark twain kind of turned coyotes into annoying pests when again its just an animal. so pop culture definitly plays a role in the awareness of incredibility.
some birds are smarter then others. birds can scan their area and find all sorts of things such as food, preadetors, preay, and their chicks. birds are very good multiplyers. they can grow twice their population within half of a year.
while i agree that having resourceful ness is a big part of any species' survival i think that you are undermining the corvids success. they are one of few speceis of bird populated globally.i dont think that a large population in the millions can double overnight
I think that there population will continues to maintines it's statuse and not gorw or shink , and I think that they got all there skills from adapting to there suraroundings. I think that some of there skills would be usful in certain parts of the world and in certain times.
I think that skills and traits are passed on by visual learning from their parents, I think that thbe birds are disliked becuase there are so many so people will always see the worst that they do.
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