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?
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parents dont teach thier children any thing its mostly just adult corvids that go "hey jimmy i learned somthing new if you..." im personifying the corvids because hey why not. the adults get to gether and do mass examples of skills that work well.
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