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I have been training the crows in my neighbourhood to solve puzzles. They visit me every day now. One goal I'm really excited about is to see if they can solv

I have been training the crows in my neighbourhood to solve puzzles. They visit me every day now. One goal I'm really excited about is to see if they can solve a puzzle that requires two crows to work together, because I've only seen videos of individual crows solving puzzles online. Can you tell me more about the teamwork that you're referring to? Are there videos or papers I can look at? I'm super curious! Thanks!

BitwiseFool 5y ago
What are the puzzles? How did you entice them to start?
- zestyping 5y ago
  It all began just before the pandemic, when I saw some YouTube videos about crow intelligence that blew me away. There were crows all over my neighbourhood, so I left out peanuts on my balcony, and eventually a crow started coming by to get them. I would replenish them at night and the crow would come the next day. After I did this consistently for a while, the crow came every morning. So then I decided to hide the peanuts in a container. I had a retainer case that springs open when you press on a button; I taped it to the railing and left it open with a peanut in it. The crow was very suspicious of it at first, giving it a wide berth while examining it from all sides. It took about a week for it to work up the courage to steal the peanut from the open container, and then another week for it to get used to the idea that the container wasn't going to cause it harm. Then I closed the container. The crow learned to peck the button to pop open the retainer case, and that's when I got hooked. The crow brought over its partner, and later in the spring as I was stuck at home in lockdown, its fledgling came along too, and they would show the fledgling how to get the peanuts. I started putting out a series of different containers, and then eventually got them a dog intelligence toy, which they aced. I think these crows aren't as smart as the New Caledonian crows in the videos; it takes them a few days or weeks of experimenting to figure out a puzzle. It got to the point where I had four or five crows basically chilling at my house on most days, playing with the toys and taking baths and discussing the puzzles. I have way too much webcam footage of all this, which I've been meaning to post but haven't had the time to sort through and edit. I have since moved to a new house and had to say goodbye to those crows. :( I have new crow friends now, though! I toss them peanuts whenever I see them on my street, and now they will follow me for a couple blocks if I walk by. This time I've made them a nice platform to land on, and they're learning to open containers, and are starting to play with a dog intelligence toy now.
mikestew 5y ago
Yes, adding a +1 to sibling comment: do tell about your puzzles. We've got some crows that just get bitchy if their bird bath gets dry, I'd like a more positive interaction if possible. :-)
agumonkey 5y ago
I guess it's not team work per se .. I forgot the details when I wrote the message above this TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_on_the_intelligence_of_crows https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_... with a peanut machine to attract them and regularly make the setup more intricate to see if they manage to find the metaphorical key to get more seeds. more like crowd strategy search ?

BitwiseFool 5y ago

What are the puzzles? How did you entice them to start?

zestyping 5y ago
It all began just before the pandemic, when I saw some YouTube videos about crow intelligence that blew me away. There were crows all over my neighbourhood, so I left out peanuts on my balcony, and eventually a crow started coming by to get them. I would replenish them at night and the crow would come the next day. After I did this consistently for a while, the crow came every morning. So then I decided to hide the peanuts in a container. I had a retainer case that springs open when you press on a button; I taped it to the railing and left it open with a peanut in it. The crow was very suspicious of it at first, giving it a wide berth while examining it from all sides. It took about a week for it to work up the courage to steal the peanut from the open container, and then another week for it to get used to the idea that the container wasn't going to cause it harm. Then I closed the container. The crow learned to peck the button to pop open the retainer case, and that's when I got hooked. The crow brought over its partner, and later in the spring as I was stuck at home in lockdown, its fledgling came along too, and they would show the fledgling how to get the peanuts. I started putting out a series of different containers, and then eventually got them a dog intelligence toy, which they aced. I think these crows aren't as smart as the New Caledonian crows in the videos; it takes them a few days or weeks of experimenting to figure out a puzzle. It got to the point where I had four or five crows basically chilling at my house on most days, playing with the toys and taking baths and discussing the puzzles. I have way too much webcam footage of all this, which I've been meaning to post but haven't had the time to sort through and edit. I have since moved to a new house and had to say goodbye to those crows. :( I have new crow friends now, though! I toss them peanuts whenever I see them on my street, and now they will follow me for a couple blocks if I walk by. This time I've made them a nice platform to land on, and they're learning to open containers, and are starting to play with a dog intelligence toy now.

mikestew 5y ago

Yes, adding a +1 to sibling comment: do tell about your puzzles. We've got some crows that just get bitchy if their bird bath gets dry, I'd like a more positive interaction if possible. :-)

agumonkey 5y ago

I guess it's not team work per se .. I forgot the details when I wrote the message above this TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_on_the_intelligence_of_crows https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_... with a peanut machine to attract them and regularly make the setup more intricate to see if they manage to find the metaphorical key to get more seeds. more like crowd strategy search ?