When I was in Belize, we visited the Belize Raptor Center. Here, I watched a black vulture demonstrate color recognition as it successfully tapped its beak to a certain color plastic ball after being instructed to do so. For example, the director would simply say: “Cora, blue. Cora, show me the blue ball, please.” With ease, Cora, the black vulture, would tap her beak to the blue ball and receive a treat for her hard work. I also learned that a barn owl at the raptor center was able to detect that its caretaker was pregnant even before the caretaker knew that she was pregnant.
I was reminded that birds can return from migration to the very same location, even to the very same tree, that they inhabited before they left. This got me thinking… what is the smartest bird species? One quick Google search and I found that crows are considered to be the most intelligent bird. To be fairer, members of the corvid family (ravens, crows, jays, magpies, etc.) are said to be the most intelligent family of birds, but crows are often placed at the top of this list.
The more that bird intelligence is studied, the more that assumptions classifying birds as simple-minded are shattered. After all, how smart can an animal be when the size of their brain can be as small as an almond? It turns out that birds do pretty well with what they are given in terms of brain size. They make efficient use of the allotted space for their physically tiny brains by packing in a great density of neurons – even more than mammals.
The brain to body ratio of crows is equal to that of great apes and cetaceans, and just slightly lower than in humans. In some research tests, crows prove to be smarter than apes, pushing many in science to consider them second only to humans in intelligence.
Here are a few neat assets of crows that truly showcase how clever they are:
Crows can craft tools with what is available to them. This mostly happens in the form of snapping twigs from trees, stripping it of bark and leaves, and then fashioning the end into a hook to probe small spaces for food.
Crows can also remember human faces. More specifically, they can remember if a person is a threat or not. Crows are able to sense that every person is different and therefore needs to be approached differently. A crow can even become comfortable with humans that they have had pleasant interactions with before. Researchers often wear masks to hide their faces when conducting experiments with crows, especially when observing reactions to negative stimuli (ex. capture and tagging).
If not for the masks during negative interactions, the crows would remember the researchers and greet them with a loud scolding by an entire disturbed flock the next time they interacted. One biologist found this out the hard way and also found out that not only can crows hold onto a grudge, but they will tell other crows about it too.
On a more somber but impressive note, crows are found to hold funerals for their dead. When a crow dies, other crows are often observed gathering around the dead crow while making a lot of noise. Scientists say that crows do this to learn about the danger and that it seems to work. Chatham, Ontario is beneath a crow migration route. An overwhelming number of crows infest the city as they pass through.
In response, the public exercises multiple tactics to combat their presence. However, every attempt to get rid of these crows, even shooting them with pellet guns, has failed. This is because the crows have learned, through “funerals”, that they needed to begin flying at a certain elevation that is just high enough to evade the fire.
It has also been found that crows can consider future events, understand causality, count up to five, consider the state of mind of other individuals, and can even reason. Crows are also excellent puzzle solvers. Watch a crow solve a complex multistep puzzle here!
To me, it is always exciting to be unexpectedly surprised and impressed by a creature that I had originally given such superficial thought to. Many birds flaunt bright colors or perform brandish displays, but what crows lack in physical appearance, they make up for in intelligence. Maybe “birdbrain” is not as much of an insult as originally intended after all.
