The raven is the smartest bird. Why is a crow smart or two ways of evolution
Those who have observed the behavior of crows know that they are VERY smart birds.
However, there are also renegades who do not believe in this.
Their argument is always the same:
- Monkeys and dolphins are understandable why they are smart - because they are very advanced evolutionarily. They are SUPREME mammals. And the crow has a beak, two wings and a sphincter, that's all. You also say that a cockroach can have a developed intellect.
These people do not know that evolution can go both physically and mentally.
For example, we have an extremely primitive fish that feeds on worms.
And so she swam and swam and smelled a worm.
But between the fish and the worm there is an obstacle - for example, some kind of underwater plant.
The fish has TWO possible evolutionary solutions to the problem.
First decision - PHYSICAL upgrade: generation after generation of fish modifies its body to learn how to BREAK underwater obstacles. She builds up a powerful tusk on her nose, enlarges her teeth, and grows claws. In general, it turns into a living bulldozer. Now she is not afraid of any obstacles - she will DESTROY them. 
But there is another way to solve it - MENTAL upgrade: the fish DOES NOT change in appearance, but masters new, more complex and intelligent behaviors. Those. she pumps her brain and begins to think that an obstacle can simply be GOED AROUND. 
What follows from this?
It follows that the mental development of an animal is by no means always proportional to the physical.
That is, those animals that have adapted to the world around them physically can be very complex bodily, but at the same time they are dumb as a tree.
And, on the contrary, some thread of bugs, which for millions of years adapted to life ONLY with the help of intellect, could well pass the exam if they knew how to talk. What can we say about crows.
By the way, women in our time are also divided into two evolutionary branches.
Some adapt to life physically: they go to fitness clubs, fill their lips with silicone, make injections in the FACE, increase their breasts, etc.
And others do not touch their body, but adapt to life mentally: they are engaged in self-development, receive three higher educations, go to all sorts of trainings, etc.
In theory, in five hundred years of such evolution, the representatives of these two branches will be WILDLY different from each other - just like the two above-mentioned fish in the drawings.
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Most of the birds from kind of ravens have amazing mental abilities.
Scientists studying the intelligence of crows claim that these birds are smarter than a four-year-old child and much smarter than many animals.
They often outperform many mammals and other birds in intelligence tests.
In the scientific world, interest in bird intelligence arose when biologists and anthropologists seriously thought about the origin of human intelligence, which could not have arisen from nowhere, without serious evolutionary development.
The intelligence of our closest relatives, the primates, was primarily studied, but scientists were amazed to find signs of advanced intelligence and cognitive abilities in corvids, which are not as evolutionarily close to humans as monkeys.
New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are "champions" in intelligence even among their corvid relatives.
For a long time, one of the main signs of high intelligence, which distinguishes a person from other animals, was considered to be manipulations with tools. But as it turned out, birds can also use tools, as well as create and modify them. This ability was observed not only in corvids, but also in herons and Galapagos woodpeckers. However, the New Caledonian crows became the favorites of zoopsychologists in terms of intelligence.
Even in Aesop's fable about the crow and the jug, it was described how a smart bird threw stones into the jug to get drunk when the water level rose.
Biologists from the University of Cambridge conducted an experiment confirming the high level of intelligence of crows. Five wild New Caledonian ravens participated in the experiment, which had to get a piece of meat from a narrow vessel half-filled with water, showing quick wits, since it was impossible to reach food with its beak.
After several attempts, all participants in the experiment found a successful solution to this problem - the crows dropped pebbles into the vessel until the water level rose enough to grab the treat with their beak.
Moreover, cunning crows refused to pick up light porous pebbles, specially left by scientists nearby, and chose heavy stones that quickly lead them to prey.
At the next stage, scientists complicated the tasks for ingenuity: they changed the vessels, added vessels with sand, or did not fill them with anything. Smart birds did not always stupidly rush to throw the biggest stone into the water, but in each specific situation they selected the most successful of the alternative options to achieve their goal. The crows consciously solved new puzzles and did not associate the presence of food with the presence of water in the vessel and large stones next to it.
Thus, scientists found that crows are able to distinguish between substances and select the most suitable tools in terms of shape and weight in order to extract food in a particular situation.
And in the next experiment, the New Caledonian raven had to solve an 8-stage quick wit problem in order not only to manage to remove a short stick hanging on a rope, but then use it to extract 3 pebbles from the cells (moreover, 3, less weight was not enough), then reset everything 3 pebbles into a device with a sufficiently long branch, and with its help, finally reach the far-hidden bait! It was a world record for intelligence. It seems to me that crows are smarter than many of us 🙂
There are many sightings of New Caledonian ravens in nature when they pluck crooked twigs from bushes with their beaks, peel off excess bark from them, leave a small knot at the end, and deftly wield the resulting hook, extracting insects from cracks and other hard-to-reach places.
New Caledonian crows are not limited to sticks and twigs alone. Experiments by zoologists from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) have shown that these birds can use even such a mysterious object as a mirror for their own purposes.
With the help of a mirror, the crows determined where the piece of meat was (they did not see the food itself, only its reflection). Looking at the reflection, the birds understood where to stick their beak in order to get food, and experiments were carried out with wild birds that had not yet had time to live next to a person and watch him.
It is known that wild animals are very rarely able to understand that the image in the mirror is their own reflection. The ability to solve the "mirror test" is possessed by a small intellectual elite of the animal world, which includes Jaco parrots, some primates, dolphins and Indian elephants. Well, and human cubs over 18 months old 🙂 Now crows have been added to them.
New Caledonian crows are not the only object of study for biologists. Japanese zoologists from Utsunomiya University proved that big-billed crows can match numbers and abstract symbols with the amount of food. By numbers and geometric shapes on containers with food, the birds recognized where it was more and where it was less.
Yes, and everyday observations of people over the gray crows and other corvids familiar to us provide material indicating their developed mental abilities:
There is a lot of evidence for the mind of corvids and it is impossible to list them in one article.
Below, under the spoiler, I give an excerpt from an interesting article on the structure of the corvid brain, describing research conducted at the Department of Biology of the Chuvash State Pedagogical University. I. Ya. Yakovleva.
Excerpt from an article about the structural features of the brain of crows
We managed to find out that
I must say that until recently, the psyche of birds has traditionally been underestimated, and not only because of the small size of their brain, but also because of the specifics of its structure. The brain of birds is deprived of the six-layered new cortex (which mammals have), and its evolution was due to the transformation of the nuclei of the striatum, or striatum.
The striatum is older than the cortex, and its functions are simpler than those of it; therefore, the central nervous system of birds was perceived as a primitive structure not intended for the implementation of higher cognitive functions that the new mammalian cortex performs.
Over time, however, the point of view on the bird brain began to change - it turned out to be more complicated than thought.
It was found that, despite the differences in the spatial organization of the neural networks of the striatum of birds and the neocortex of mammals, their formation and development in evolution are determined by the same morphological patterns.
Do corvids have any features that distinguish their brains from other birds? To do this, the crow needs to be compared with someone - for example, with a dove. Pigeons really do not differ in great intelligence, and numerous works by Professor Zoya Alexandrovna Zorina and her colleagues from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University made it possible to find out in detail what exactly pigeons are more stupid than crows. Gray crows are able to estimate the size of sets and store such mathematical information not only in specific images, but also in a generalized, abstract form that birds can associate, for example, with Arabic numerals; they can see analogies in the shape of objects without paying attention to the color of those objects. That is, the birds, as it were, represent a separate sign "in the mind", without being tied to a specific subject. Pigeons learn this procedure much more slowly. In addition, the set for learning in pigeons is practically not formed, while in corvids it appears quite quickly and on the basis of an optimal strategy. Obviously, the difference in cognitive abilities is explained by differences in the structure of the brain of birds of these two species.
We managed to find out that crows have twice as many neurons in their brains as pigeons and twice their specific density. At the same time, the neurons and glia in the brain of the crow are smaller, and the neuroglial complexes are larger than those of the pigeon.
In crows, the structural components of the brain are located closer to each other, which speeds up and optimizes the work of nerve chains.
So, crows owe their exceptional intelligence to the peculiarities of neural architecture. Nevertheless, birds, including corvids, are noticeably inferior to mammals in terms of the total number of neurons. If in the brain of a crow there are 660 million neurons, then in animals their number is measured in tens of billions. What allows corvids to solve problems on a par with some primates? The fact is that in mammals, in the evolutionary series, the density of cellular elements decreases, while in birds it increases, including due to the combination of single neurons and glia into the aforementioned neuroglial complexes. Apparently, in connection with the acquisition of the ability of birds to fly, if necessary, on the one hand, the maximum lightening of the total mass, and on the other hand, the acceleration of movements in their brain, a cardinal optimization of information processing mechanisms took place. This required a different structural-cellular solution: instead of the columnar structure characteristic of mammals, birds developed spherical cell complexes. These complexes have become the most important structural and functional units of the avian brain, which are not inferior in efficiency to the neural columns in the brain of animals.
“Needless to say, a crow is a smart bird, many people know this. Scientists who study the intelligence of a crow claim that these birds are smarter than a four-year-old child and much smarter than many animals.
Ornithologists consider the crow a unique object for observation and an animal whose intelligence is comparable to that of a person.
Most birds from the genus of crows have remarkable mental abilities. They often outperform many mammals and other birds in intelligence tests. New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are "champions" in intelligence even among their relatives. On our Earth, only man, some higher primates and these amazing crows know how to make and use tools.
Biologists from the University of Cambridge conducted an experiment confirming the high level of intelligence of crows.
Five wild New Caledonian ravens participated in the experiment, which had to get a piece of meat from a vessel half-filled with water, showing intelligence and ingenuity, because the food was not taken out in the usual and simple way, the beak did not reach the food.
Having made several attempts, all the wards of scientists were able to independently find the most rational solution to this problem - they took the "stones" in their beak, lifted them to the throat of the cylinder and dropped them into the water. Step by step, the water level rose and after a while a piece of food rose to a level at which the crow could catch it with its beak.
The crows quickly learned their lesson, easily getting food. Scientists scattered around a lot of different stones made of light materials that did not sink, but they did not succeed in fooling the wise crows. Birds chose heavy large stones in order to quickly fill the vessel and eat food floating on the surface. Probably, the crow estimates the weight of the stone, taking it in its beak, and realizes that light stones do not bring prey closer to it.
Scientists changed the vessels, added vessels with sand, or filled them with nothing. Surprisingly, the birds weren't always looking for the biggest rock or vessel filled with water - they were often looking for alternatives.
Thus, scientists have found that crows are able to evaluate the mass and shape of their "tools", to distinguish between different types of matter - sand, water and air.
The vast majority of animals on Earth are looking for food on a conditioned reflex, but not crows, and, moreover, New Zealand, the most intelligent of them. The crows consciously solved new riddles and did not associate the signs of the presence of food with the presence of water in the vessel and large stones next to it.
Thus, the crows living in New Caledonia not only know how to use tools, but also consciously evaluate their suitability and effectiveness in each case, which puts these birds on a par with humans and higher primates. New Zealand and British scientists wrote about this in an article published in the journal PLoSONE.
Why is a crow so smart?
It is believed that the crow is very smart by nature, and here is another advantage: crows are flocking birds. Living in a flock, where every bird already has a mind, the crows also learn and learn from their relatives in the flock. Thus, a collective experience arises, which is mastered by each bird in the flock. That's why crows are so smart.
Crows are social birds. They are not alien to mutual assistance. If the chicks in the nest are in danger, no matter from whom, even from a predator, even from a person, the whole flock will selflessly defend itself, the offender will not seem a little. Of course, there are small “household” disassemblies inside the flock, but we, people, often sin with this.
Observations of these unique birds have shown that they are able to plan their actions. In one experiment conducted at Oxford University in the UK, a bird went so far as to bend a wire with its beak to make a hook and get food from a narrow transparent flask. The crow managed to get a basket of treats, although no one taught her such tricks.
Crows skillfully hide their prey, as spies, looking around, bury "stash". Birds also realize that they should hide their prey if other birds have seen where the food is hidden. But, what should be noted, the crows hid the supplies only after the "witnesses" flew away.
Crows are extremely cunning, they rarely fall into traps and, even if they are caught, they are able to get out of them. Anyone who has ever dealt with them will tell you about these qualities of a raven. Fishermen told how crows in winter, when holes were cut in the ice and a fishing line with live bait was lowered there, pulled it out in the absence of fishermen and pecked. According to eyewitnesses, not a single crow has yet been hooked.
In general, crows, living for centuries next to a person, are in many ways similar to people. So, crows correctly determine the meaning of traffic signals - at red light they calmly pick up the corpses of animals hit by cars on the road, and at green they fly away. They perfectly distinguish what is in the hands of a person, a stick or a gun; distinguish between a child and an adult, a man and a woman
Not so long ago, residents of Tokyo observed the amazing behavior of these birds. City crows gathered in noisy crowds at highway intersections. At a red light, without fear of cars, they quickly flocked to the roadway and laid out walnuts on the asphalt. As the cars passed and the red light came back on, cunning crows were harvesting the cracked nuts.
Having found a dry bread crust, the crow will never choke on dry food, but will definitely find a puddle, soak the bread, and only after that will it eat or take it to the chicks. She can open a matchbox with her paw and unwrap a candy wrapper without damaging it.
Ravens are monogamous birds - having found a mate, they live with it to the end. And crows can live longer than all birds - 50-75 years. These amazing birds are wonderful and caring parents. They nurse chicks, guard and even raise them.
Crows communicate with each other a lot and with pleasure, the crow language is extremely developed, has a rich "vocabulary". With different sounds, the crows turn to the young, swear, threaten, emit alarms, and have a love conversation. Sometimes several birds make one sound, in unison, for greater volume.
Ravens are also kept as pets. Having tamed such a bird, a person gets a lot of pleasure from communicating with it. With a crow, sometimes, you can “talk” because these amazing birds can imitate the human voice. A tamed crow becomes a faithful and reliable friend to a person for life. A domestic crow will protect housing and the owner from a villain no worse than a guard dog. Alas, it is impossible to release a tamed crow into the wild, it will not be able to adapt and will die.
And not without a sense of humor
"THE CROW SAD THE US SYMBOL AND RIDED LIKE A TAXI"
"The Crow Rides the Wipers"
"At Moscow State University, for example, in one study, crows were offered straight sticks with hooks at the end to get pieces of meat. Without hesitation, the subjects chose the second option. The next time they were given only straight wire rods, the ends of which were immediately turned into hooks by the beaks of birds. And in the final round there was a sensation. In the course of the experiment, the crows had to press the target button with their beak in order for food to fall into the feeder. When the target was blocked by a screen with a small hole, the birds were taught to stick a match into it, allowing them to reach the button. What was the surprise of scientists when one of the tested "persons" instead began to slip a match from the side, using it as a lever to achieve the desired result. This method turned out to be easier, because. did not require aiming at the notorious hole.
In addition, crows have excellent memory and high learning ability. According to experts, they have the ability for rational activity, exhibit associative and logical thinking, possess elementary mathematical knowledge (count up to five, distinguish between shape, symmetry, size ratio, three-dimensional bodies and flat figures). And they know how to make friends. They live in flocks, get food together and share it with each other, jointly protect themselves from enemies, are capable of mutual assistance, sometimes they even build nests together, do not leave relatives in trouble. In difficult situations, they can turn to a person for help. Here is one of those stories. One evening there was a knock on the balcony door of the apartment on the seventh floor. The visitor was a crow with a bone stuck in its throat. The bird approached the owner of the house and lifted her head up, demonstrating the problem, and when he saved her from misfortune, she turned and went home, with a nod and a single “carr”, asking to open the balcony, through which she got to good people. Note: I not only learned the route, but also knew how to get them to let me in and who to turn to - the strongest in the family. Where can you get such knowledge if you do not study Homo sapiens?
Everyone has heard this saying: "wise as a raven." What makes this sullen bird the smartest? Most likely, the reason for this is the famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe, where the raven was the main character. But on the other hand, maybe because they know where to find the best, can solve puzzles, have specific goals, lie for their own benefit and contact similar species like them?
"Marshmallow" for a smart bird
Almost forty years ago, the legendary “zephyr experiment” took place in the UK. Its essence is as follows: each of the detachment of 4-year-old children, of which there were six hundred, received a marshmallow and had to eat it immediately, or leave it in their hands for a while and earn two marshmallows already. As a result, some of the children heard about the second condition of the task when they chewed marshmallows with pleasure. As it turned out later, the kids, who showed stamina and restraint, showed excellent results in their school years.
How are the crows connected in this case? Up to this point, it was common knowledge that crows can hide food supplies for themselves, but this does not indicate the presence of intelligence. For example, squirrels dig nuts into the ground, but after that they don’t remember where they made hiding places in 75% of cases, and because of this, a large number of new trees appear.
But black wise birds are not like that. During the experiment, it turned out that a raven can refuse a tasty treat if it knows that in the future it will receive even more for it. When the experimental birds were offered food right now or a tool they could use to open the "prize" box, they chose the tool even if the box didn't exist yet. The crows remembered that the box always appears 15 minutes after the tool, and decided to be patient in order to win.
Thieves and deceivers
But that's not all. In another experiment, a crow was asked to drink water from a narrow vessel into which its head could not fit. Then the bird showed an excellent knowledge of the law of Archimedes: she began to throw heavy objects into the vessel, which raised the level of the water, until finally the raven could drink.
Despite their intelligence, crows are not very burdened with moral dilemmas and, on occasion, are ready to steal food from a fellow. To do this, they monitor where other birds hide food, and then rob caches. But legitimate food owners are also often cunning and only pretend to hide supplies, misleading thieves.
Of course, crows do not always behave like complete egoists. They can tell other crows where to find a source of delicious food and cooperate to drive off rivals. Moreover, the birds call not only “their own”, sometimes inviting wolves to the wounded animals. Predators kill them and take some of the meat, and the rest goes to the "gunners".
Personally, you can’t pull me out in the sun in the summer heat unless absolutely necessary. But my household cannot live without country exotics. So when they get home, I get to be the listener - how much I've lost not seeing this or that. My husband is an engineer, a man far from exalted and, in general, laconic, just transforms before our eyes when he starts talking, for example, about ... a crow.
“You should have seen her break walnuts!” He will take it in his beak, fly to the road, and throw it on the asphalt from a great height. If the nut remains intact, she picks it up, flies higher and throws it again on the asphalt. And so on, until the nut cracks.
- Come on! It's just that the nut is too big for a crow's beak, so she drops it!
- No, I have seen such scenes more than once. And every time the impression is that the crow is fully aware of what she needs. Or, still, he can put a nut under the wheels of an approaching car. And don't be afraid to walk the road! And then he picks up pieces of the nucleolus.
- Well, it is generally on the verge of fantasy! So, she sort of calculates what will happen if a heavy car drives over a nut?
- That's it! And if she manages to snatch a dry bread crust, she will not choke - she will find a tin of rainwater and begin to dip. He will soak a piece, and only then he will eat it or take it to the nest for the chicks. By the way, about the nest. Have you ever seen a crow's nest up close? No? And since childhood, I have never ceased to be amazed at how she builds such a complex engineering structure. There, the frame is made of pieces of wire, which is intertwined in the most intricate way, and then all this is strengthened with branches, paper, pieces of cloth and who knows what else. In any case, we were convinced as boys that breaking a crow's nest is not so easy!
Well, it's just an ancient instinct. Where is the mind here?
- And despite the fact that she can pull a fishing line with fish instead of you on the shore if you gape. And not when there is nothing on the hook, but precisely at the moment when the float twitches. So, he thinks that the fish has already been caught, and we must hurry!
Such, approximately, dialogues took place with us more than once. But I did not attach much importance to them: my household, who are in love with nature, are not averse to slightly embellish reality. But in August of this year, I came across a description of scientific experiments that scientists are conducting - with a crow. And you can't suspect them of telling stories. And, imagine, the researchers also came to the conclusion that the crow is something too smart. That is, she not only uses a certain object as a tool of labor, but can make it herself, with her own ... I almost said - with her hands. With your own paws and beak!
The crow that so captured the imagination of scientists was named Betty. They also have another similar individual living there, in Oxford, but a male, named Abel. Abel is already in years, his "reason" is clearly dulled. But a young bird named Betty, according to researchers, is able to think in terms of cause and effect relationships. By the way, when such experiments were carried out with primates, our closest relatives, they very much disappointed scientists - they turned out to be clearly stupid. And here is the crow...
Alex Kaselnik, Professor of Behavioral Ecology at the University of Oxford, says literally the following:
“The crow is not only smarter than we think. With regard to tools, she shows a higher understanding than a chimpanzee. .
A team of Oxford scientists stumbled upon this sensational discovery almost by accident. Studying the behavior of two Corvus moneduloides crows caught in New Caledonia (this is a French possession - a group of islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean), the researchers decided to check whether a crow can get food from a vertical container using a piece of wire or a hook. Imagine the surprise of the professors when, in experiment number five, the male Abel stole the hook and flew away with it to another part of the poultry house, and the female Betty quickly built a hook for herself, bending an even piece of wire, and got food! The amazed scientists at first thought it was pure coincidence. They began to repeat the experiment with pieces of even wire over and over again. And nine times out of ten, Betty made a hook and got her livelihood!
“Although many animals use something like tools, we are not yet aware of other cases in which they meaningfully subjected an object to a purposeful modification in order to solve a new task,” Professor Kaselnik summarizes in a purely scientific language.
As for the aforementioned crows from New Caledonia, they have already been “caught” making at least two tools. Gavin Hunt, a New Zealand professor at the University of Auckland, has also studied these smart birds, but he doesn't think Betty's behavior is all that unique. There are other birds that are far from chicken brains. Let's say a woodpecker from the Galapagos Islands uses a cactus thorn to pick out insects. Pigeons are known to be able to recognize a particular person, distinguish letters of the alphabet from each other, and even learn the differences between paintings. And let's not even talk about parrots. For example, Alex, the African gray parrot, became a big celebrity in the 1980s: he had a vocabulary of hundreds of English words and could ask questions and make requests. Another Jaco named Casco, a resident of Isfahan (Iran) is a real polyglot and even a devout Muslim: he knows about 180 words in Persian and Arabic, calls Shia imams by name, clearly pronounces several dozen sayings from the Koran. But you won’t surprise us with parrots anymore - it’s clear that they are capable of imitation. And here are the crows...
Why did they suddenly undertake to investigate these scavengers? And why, one wonders, was this particular species caught for experiments? Because in natural conditions, in the bosom of nature, it was noticed how, when obtaining food, crows choose a flyer of exactly the length and shape that is required in this particular case, making it a kind of hook. That is, it seems that the bird analyzes the possible options in his mind and calculates the consequences. This intrigued ornithologists: can she remake an instrument of non-natural origin? Well, now it's been confirmed. And the results of a study by Oxford scientists were published on August 9, 2002 in the scientific journal Science.
By the way, in the past, Gavin Hunt from Auckland conducted research during which it was found that the crow, like most people, is not left-handed, but right-handed. We noticed this while observing the very sophisticated manipulations that she does, folding an object of the desired shape from leaves.
The bird tears off pieces of leaves or twigs and turns them into a tool to get insects from a tree trunk, more often using the right side of the beak than the left. Prior to this, a similar tendency - to use predominantly the right side of the body - was observed only in humans and some primates. When the same tendency was noticed in the crow, the question arose: maybe it is also among the fairly developed creatures? Moreover, Gavin Hunt considers crow actions to be a manifestation of a high level of "craft". "It's quite a complex manipulation to bite off the leaves and bite them so as to make tools of the desired shape," Hunt told the BBC correspondent.
Hunt and his colleagues described in the journal Nature how they collected these very "tools" of Corves moneduloides and analyzed them. And we came to the conclusion that such a complex of consistent actions requires considerable mental effort.
And why are researchers so intrigued by the "right-beaked" features of crows? Because before that, it was believed that in a person it is associated with the ability to meaningful speech, and that part of the brain that controls the right side of the body is responsible for speech. As for the right-billed crows, there is something to think about. Either we are mistaken about our speech, or the crow can also speak, but carefully hides it. However, it is well known that some raven is able to speak no worse than a parrot, he may have a decent "vocabulary". In addition, he has a relatively melodic voice, unlike a crow, which only croaks. In any case, a raven and a crow (and this, imagine, are different birds, and each has its own females and males) probably have an ancient history. And not so long ago, scientists came to the assumption that the ancestor of the crows was a winged dinosaur.
In 1998, American archaeologists who were excavating on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar unearthed the remains of a strange bird-like creature.
This creature, discovered in the northern part of Madagascar, lived on Earth approximately 65 or 70 million years ago (it was called Rahona Ostromi), was the size of a crow, but its skeleton is clearly different from that of the current bird.
Like a bird, the rajona was covered in feathers, and the opposing thumbs allowed it to cling to branches and perch in trees. However, it was a predatory and fearless creature that could chop and slash prey with its claws like the flying assassins immortalized in the movie Jurassic Park. So it seems that crows have a very ancient experience of survival and no less ancient intellectual baggage.
And the funniest thing about crow business, you know what? That foreign scientists came to such conclusions only now, and our ornithologists knew all this a long time ago. That is, that the crow has intelligence. More than two years ago, in the newspaper "World of News" the article was called "Intellectual Crow". And there it is said that the famous Russian scientist Leonid Viktorovich Krushinsky made something like a rating of the mental abilities of representatives of the fauna. This rating shows that among the birds the smartest are crows and jackdaws (jackdaws, by the way, belong to the same family of corvids as crows and crows), moreover, crows are higher in mental development than cats, dogs and even wolves. “Some of the tasks that wolves solved were handled by seven-year-olds,” the scientists say. "It's easy to assume that a crow's mind corresponds to the intelligence of an eight or nine-year-old child."
That's it! This was proved in an experiment conducted at the biostation of Moscow State University.
Seven crows were put in different cages, from which they could see each other, and next to the cages, at a distance inaccessible to the beak, they placed a piece of crow delicacy. Literally a few minutes later, one of the crows tore up the newspaper, folded a piece of paper into a thick tube, and, taking it in its beak, rolled a delicacy to the cage with the help of this very tube. The rest of the crows immediately followed suit. That is, the crow, as it were, calculates its actions and only then does something. Maybe it is thanks to her remarkable bird intelligence that she never collides with cars or trains, unlike other birds. And the proportion between the weight of the body and the weight of the brain in a crow is the same as in a man. Or, say, like a dolphin.
And recently, in one of the newspapers, an interesting article was published “The Raven is still that “thing”, and such an experiment was described there. If a crow is offered food to choose from two feeders (moreover, the bird knows from experience that the second one will be immediately removed), then it will unmistakably choose the one in which there are at least one more worms - 11 or 12. A person is not able to immediately determine such an insignificant difference and a crow will never make a mistake. How does she manage to calculate? Mystery. And even in more complex experiments, she invariably turns out to be on top.
If you cover the feeders with cards with numbers (for example, “1 + 2” and “2 + 2”), then she will definitely choose the one with more numbers. Scientists are forced to admit that crows “distinguish the sign of a number”, “capable of generalization and abstraction” ... And what is this, if not a sign of intelligence? Such actions cannot be attributed to instincts or reflexes.
In general, crows, living for centuries next to a person, are in many ways similar to people. City birds love sausage, lard, cheese, chicken eggs. From time to time they arrange something like general gatherings, which sometimes gather several tens of thousands of individuals. For example, in the Canadian city of Woodstock, the population is 35 thousand, and the raven gathers about 70-75 thousand.
People are trying to understand what all these noisy gatherings are for? And who knows them. Maybe the crows exchange news, or maybe they help the young choose a suitable mate. By the way, their families are strong and monogamous, and their young are raised until they grow up, until the grown chicks create their own family. Ravens are acutely aware of danger: a man with a gun will not be allowed to come close, but with a stick of the same size - please. They like to frolic, playing with a tennis ball or sliding down from the dome of the church, as if from an ice slide. In general, as they say, nothing human is alien to them.
But what about the fact that crows sometimes attack hares, dogs, and even people? Where is their vaunted intelligence?
And here, excuse me, the point is in the natural specialization of these birds - orderlies of the forest and the city. They catch sick and weakened animals and attack only those from whom the vibes of weakness and fear emanate. Crows are extremely sensitive to the adrenaline released in such cases. Therefore, it is believed that in the city the crow occupies the top of the ecological pyramid. Its population is growing as more and more carrion and other offal appears in our cities. Here the crow is simply irreplaceable. So in vain in some places they set traps, poison and shoot crows. However, you don’t have to worry too much: they are smart enough and will still survive! But whether those who are trying to destroy them will survive, that's how to say!
