6 ms·

Who's the smartest corvid?

159 points by NaOH 4mo ago

ball_of_lint 4mo ago
Probably Grip?
tejohnso 4mo ago
Chasing a bird of lesser intelligence so that it slams into an office building window seems especially cruel.
- fortran77 4mo ago
  Birds chase coyotes so they slam into the sides of cliff walls, sometimes even painting a fake tunnel to fool the coyote.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tialaramex 4mo ago
    I believe that canonically the tunnel painting is made by the coyote, the problem is that because it's a cartoon the bird can run into the non-existent tunnel anyway and the coyote cannot because that's funnier. It is interesting that e.g. "Coyote time" was copied into platform games but in real life if you're not stood on solid ground you fall immediately 'cos Mother Nature doesn't give a shit what's more fun.
    - trick-or-treat 4mo ago
      Mother Nature isn't in charge of gravity. That's Papa Physics' job.
  - ragazzina 4mo ago
    >Birds chase coyotes Does the bird ever even acknowledges the coyote?
    - GJim 4mo ago
      It does beep at it.
- wavemode 4mo ago
  A lot of crow hunting stories feel cruel to read about, though I wonder why that is. There is something about intelligence that seems to carry a degree of... moral responsibility, somehow? Though in reality it's just an animal eating another animal, as ever.
  - avadodin 4mo ago
    Humans used to hunt animals by chasing them into pits and then punching holes into them with sticks until they bled out not to mention the many kinds of horrible traps for smaller prey animals. Humane hunting is mostly something that only a rich old guy with his night vision goggles and sniper rifle can afford. Even for farm animals, many cultures perform their sacrifice in ghastly ways.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bee_rider 4mo ago
    Maybe something like this: Most animals hunt in a way that minimizes their odds of getting hurt, to the best of their ability. Crows are pretty smart, and not very strong in the grand scheme of things. So they engage in tactics that look like cruel manipulative pranks; causing the prey to somehow kill itself or get killed by something stronger. In the end, I think a gazelle doesn’t look up at the lion that killed it by outrunning it and the snapping its neck and say “Ah well, got me fair and square!”
    - technothrasher 4mo ago
      > a gazelle doesn’t look up at the lion that killed it by outrunning it and the snapping its neck I know this is tangential to your point, but lions don't really hunt that way. They ambush, as they could never outrun a gazelle, and then they don't snap its neck unless unintentionally. They tend to just start eating it while it is still alive. It's quite brutal to watch.
- phyzome 4mo ago
  How is it so different from, I don't know, directly grabbing it and tearing it apart? There are only so many ways they have to kill something (or injure it enough to allow killing it).
- zavec 4mo ago
  It definitely seems brutal, but when I stop and think about it it's actually probably more humane for the prey than getting eaten alive, right?
JohnMakin 4mo ago
One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, a pretty sizable rock smacked the pavement next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. If it had hit my head I would have been hurt. I finally look up and see a big crow staring directly down at me - it had dropped it from the power lines, it had seemingly been intentional, maybe as a warning, I don't know. I attributed it to malice towards the vagrants that harass them. I was amazed at how much intelligence it would take to 1) form a grudge 2) form intent to threaten/harm, 3) formulate a plan using a weapon with cause -> effect to execute intent, 4) wait for opportunity. I have observed a lot of very intelligent behaviors from these birds but that was the wildest one. I have seen it happen once since, so I'm convinced it isn't an accident.
- fritzo 4mo ago
  By "sizable rock" do you mean large pebble or small boulder?
  - JohnMakin 4mo ago
    A little larger than a golf ball.
    - redsocksfan45 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - IAmBroom 4mo ago
      Something that produces a loud exclamation in a movie character, but possible permanent brain damage IRL.
      - JohnMakin 4mo ago
noelwelsh 4mo ago
Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvmux_EqHTbbg0t https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat) has shown me there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way). Birds have higher neural density than mammals (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) so can pack a lot into their tiny heads. I do wonder what they'd have to say, if given the chance.
- xfeeefeee 4mo ago
  I started doing this with my cat. It's easy to try to explain away the underlying thought processes as coincidental association, and some of that is certainly true, but experiencing it first hand with a cat you know well is certainly different. My cat presses a button for his name when he wants attentions, buttons for outside, food, water. A button for YouTube (the startup sound), since he likes watching other cats and critter videos and nature documentaries on there. I was working in the other room during a stormy day and he was watching some nature video when I heard him repeatedly pressing the YouTube button and his name. But he was already watching it? When I went out there, I saw there was a video playing with a cat that looked almost exactly like him on the screen. He seemed extremely interested. Did he think it was him? Or was he just calling attention that it looked like him and wanted to tell me? Either way, never saw that behavior before or after.
- drcongo 4mo ago
  Who's a pretty boy?
- SauntSolaire 4mo ago
  I would be wary of extrapolating too much from the talking buttons. Review the clever hans effect and (the critiques of) Koko the gorilla for examples of people misattributing classical conditioning for intentionality. The fact is that humans are exceedingly quick to find patterns in random data (e.g. horescopes, any form of divination), and that tendency gets amplified when the opportunity to anthropomorphize a cute animal is presented.
Aboutplants 4mo ago
Wonderful timing. Me and my daughter just started to feed and befriend a crow in our backyard. We started by putting out a few pieces of cat foot, shaking the plastic container and tapping on the table we put it on to signal to the crow we had put out food. Within only 2 days the crow has learned to come and swoop down for his meal within just a minute or two after he does his normal fly-by passes. Now only about 5 days in, and we have the crow coming right down to eat as we put out the food, not much of a care that we are there. My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda. One thing I didn’t not really account for is that now in the morning when I step outside our new friend really lays on the noises of excitement as he knows a meal is about to be served.
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  I'm hoping that is a typo for cat food, instead of training your cattle on horrifically scavenged body parts.
- MisterTea 4mo ago
  > My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda. Coins? Screw that. Go right to bills.
  - m463 4mo ago
    bills are fragile, bitcoin might be better long-term.
    - mikestorrent 4mo ago
      Working on training my crowbuddy so that he bites the gold coins and only brings real ones, was getting too much iron pyrite
- mikestorrent 4mo ago
  I have been working on this as well and have a crowbuddy who enjoys what I feed him. I want him to do more, but haven't gotten him to yet. A couple years ago I was doing this and they brought me a chicken head as a gift. Thanks... I guess?
cubefox 4mo ago
Here is one playing ball: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw https://youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw This one is feeding a dog: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0
- pflanze 4mo ago
  > Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 There was a video on youtube about a crow coming to a human and making that sound, also in winter with snow; commenters agreed that it was probably thirsty and was imitating running water that way to get the human to give it water. The human in the video didn't get that. But here in the end we can see the crow eating snow, which may confirm that it is really a way for crows tell when they are thirsty? Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" might be just testing the owl's capabilities for checking whether killing the owl to drink its blood would be an option? (I guess melting snow for water is increasing the risk for the crow to be cold & run out of energy.)
  - HankB99 4mo ago
    > Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" I wonder if they're just amusing themselves (by being little jerks.) One day in early spring, I thought I heard a Red Tail Hawk screeching in a tree directly above me. I stood back, searching for it. I never spotted it despite the leaves barely out on the tree. But I did spot a Blue Jay hopping around some lower branches. When I got home I looked up Blue Jay behavior and found that they do imitate the calls of Red Tail Hawks, among others.
- r721 4mo ago
  I like this one: >Crow skiing down a roof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
  - cubefox 4mo ago
    This one seems smarter than an average dog.
jujube3 4mo ago
Corvid-19 ?
NelsonMinar 4mo ago
If you like the idea of smart corvids, Adrian Tchaikovsky's scifi novel "The Children of Memory" is a fun read. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-memory https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...
- werrett 4mo ago
  And the just released “Palaces of The Crow” by Ray Nayler. I just finished it — really moving but also a brutal read in parts (c.f. because of what humans will do to each other not crows) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241392678 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241392678 > In Ray Nayler's speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl.
drcongo 4mo ago
Thanks to Merlin Bird ID, I've got rather into birds in the past few years. We have a robin and blackbird that hang out in the garden with us, seemingly unafraid. A couple of months back I bought a camera feeder [0] but we've still only had three bird types that visit - a coal tit who comes fairly infrequently but moves so fast the camera could easily be missing him, some amazing jackdaws who seem to take turns on the feeder, and some Eurasian magpies who are absolute fucking arseholes. I made the mistake of putting a mealworm / seed mix in the feeder once, and the mealworms were so prized by the magpies that they worked out how to empty it completely within minutes of me filling it, throwing all the seed that they weren't interested in on the floor. I've stopped putting mealworms in it now, but now they empty it just to make sure there's none in there. I'm going to have to take it down and try to fashion some kind of grate to make it much harder to get the seeds out. [0] https://naturespy.org https://naturespy.org - not the best resolution, but plenty good enough for up close video of the birds. I did a fair bit of research and loved the fact that these guys are a social enterprise who put their profits back into conservation projects. Highly recommended.
- drcongo 4mo ago
  Oh, and my other favourite corvid story - there's a guy that walks three very old dogs in my local park and he occasionally throws tiny treats down for them as they walk around. Crows started following him around the park for the treats the dogs missed, so then he started feeding them to the crows too, and now he walks slowly around the park with 3 old dogs and about 5 crows ambling along with him all in a fairly tight little group. I love crows.
- sherr 4mo ago
  Yes, magpies are very intelligent birds. Also very annoying! I don't like hearing their "cackling", especially if you're in bed trying to sleep. Magpies at mine also figured out how to feed from the wire-cylinder hanging feeder, meant for small birds. They flap their wings like crazy to hover for a few moments at the feeder and knock out the food or get to it. Clever birds. The pigeons just stand around below and scavenge ...
- vintermann 4mo ago
  Magpies certainly have a different temperament from crows. I tried to feed a local crow a few years ago, and while it was busy acting confused (you're giving this to me? Seriously?) a magpie swooped in for the treat. These days I'm on good terms with both. The magpies are easily bullied away by the crows, and I've learned the distinctly unfriendly noise they make when a crow comes close (three rapid, sharp chatters). I think they have a sound for me as well, a rising chi-chik very quietly. Probably to avoid announcing the arrival of the food guy to the crows.
MisterTea 4mo ago
> At least five such cases involved biologists: in Montana, Crow White ... Crow White is a hell of a name. Bravo to their parents.
- panzagl 4mo ago
  Montana is home to the Crow Reservation so it might be indigenous.
- tialaramex 4mo ago
  Humans are allowed to just change their names. It's not very common, especially in academics because your name is attached to your reputation, but it's not forbidden or even especially unusual. [And of course in several important cultures women are expected to change their name when they marry, although this seems like a terrible idea to me and in general I recommend against it] So it is entirely possible that they went "I think I will take the name Crow White, that's hilarious" and a PhD later they're a professor running research on corvids. Edited to add mention of cultural convention to change names on marriage.
davidee 4mo ago
We have a rather large number of Blue Jays that frequent our backyard. The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both. Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one. The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way. They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell. Fascinating. They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.
- e40 4mo ago
  We have two types jays that visit us. Scrub and Stellar. They come into the kitchen (door off the deck) to stand and sort through the bowl of peanuts in the shell. It’s hilarious to watch them go through them, finding the heaviest (?) ones, tossing the rejects to and fro. They’re completely unafraid of us. They are a great joy to watch.
metalman 4mo ago
My bet is on Ravens, who live a long time, and the ancients among them get a white flight feathers in the wings which I have seen once, up close in a nieghbors yard who was closer with the critters than humans. My fealing of ravens inteligence is based on there complex behaviors and one particular individual,who is bat shit insane, and makes the wildest strangest sounds and calls that are impossible to ignore for hours, but survives year to year, ie:dumb things never go crazy and or never survive there disfunctions. ravens also fly upside down regularly, and have been filmed pranking wolves by pulling there tails, and there is strong evidence for ravens working as spotters and leading wolves to easy/injured prey that the ravens get to clean up after the kill
weishe 4mo ago
[dead]
ggm 4mo ago
Australian Magpies are NOT corvid but Artamidae along with the butcherbird, but they are absolutely this intelligent. They hold court over their juvelines and enforce behaviour, and they mourn the passing of members of the community. I think it's possible the niche encourages large brains. A bit of nature not nurture maybe. They are tool users. And they can teach offspring lessons learned from humans, and recognize friend and foe. Well mostly: cyclists are routinely mis-cast as foe no matter what. This is why Australian cyclists look like demented wheelie porcupines: cable ties on the helmet keep the eye-peckers at bay.
- Nursie 4mo ago
  Love our magpies, we’ve been interacting with the local family for several years now and they trust us pretty well. Last year during fledging season their baby was near the side of the road, in the grass looking lost/hurt/exhausted, so some kind but misguided passers-by (it’s normal, they kick ‘em out of the nest to try and make them fly) picked it up and were going to take it to a wildlife hospital. Mum was watching them from a tree, quite distressed. I persuaded them I’d look after it and get help if needed, and took the baby back up to the house, then sat down outside and tried to give it back. Baby was by this point clutching my hand and nestling in to me. Mum wandered up, took a look at me holding her kid and I could almost imagine her saying “Ah, yeah you look after him for a while then, I need a break” because she seemed to relax, then went back to the other adults and had a feed before coming back for him!
erkt 4mo ago
I still can't enter a corvid thread without looking for some Unidan copypasta.
- knollimar 4mo ago
  The jackdaw is the smartest corvid because it ragebaits people on the internet
chasd00 4mo ago
Once as a kid I was at my cousin’s ranch outside of Waxahachie Texas. I was sitting on the steps to his house eating a sandwich when a crow landed about 10 feet away and hopped right up to me. I gave it some of my sandwich and it just flew off. It was very strange, it didn’t seem to fear me at all and just wanted a bite. I told my aunt and she was shocked and not aware of any tame crows at all.
voidUpdate 4mo ago
I really like crows and magpies. Crows especially do little hops when they run around and it always makes me smile. I've wanted to make friends with the ones around me for a while but I haven't yet
braggerxyz 4mo ago
I live next to a farm in a rural town. We have lots of cats around which are necessary to keep the rodents in check. Our cats love to play their prey to death in our yard (yeah nature is cruel). Some of the local crows know how to get the dead mice from the cats. One or two crows distract the cat, the cat likes to chase the crows for the thrill of the hunt, and then one crow swoops in and steals the cats prey. The cats are always bamboozled when this happens and we watch and laugh. Really smart these feathered freaks :D I leave shelled peanuts and other bird feed out in the winter, and is fascinating to watch the crows and magpies to crack them open, feed on some of them, then grab two shelled peanuts and fly off with them. They already recognize me coming out in the winter mornings with the bird feed and peanut bags. They wait patiently in the surrounding trees until I'm in the house again. They even see me through the windows watching them and only come down to feed once I am out of sight for them. Truly remarkable. We also have some pairs of red kites in our area which circle over our fields for prey. The crows don't like them and will try to chase them away, mostly in packs of two to three crows. They are 99% successful in chasing the red kites away because they are more agile in the air and can do more complex flight manouvers. But once one of the crows got to close to the claws of the kite and was killed instantly and dropped down dead. What happened then was even more fascinating. The whole flock of crows gathered around their dead companion and maybe "mourned"? I don't know how to else explain it. Next winter I will try to befriend them even more, they are so fascinating!
- the-grump 4mo ago
  Thank you for sharing these wonderful stories!
- grousewood 4mo ago
  I've heard the crow "funeral" is an information gathering strategy. Figuring out what killed it, what risks are in the area, how to mitigate it happening again. Very clever!
  - jihadjihad 4mo ago
    The irony of a group of crows being called a murder while they are gathered for a funeral, going over their own post mortem of a fallen comrade.
trick-or-treat 4mo ago
In my part of the world there's a cuckoo that pulls a heist on crows where the male makes annoying noises and the crows chase him off while the female cuckoo invades the nest and leaves an egg. When the egg hatches the bird inside looks nothing like a crow but the crow mama never catches on and pays child support until it's grown. That cuckoo gets my vote for cleverest.
- vintermann 4mo ago
  What part of the world is that? I don't think European cuckoos target birds as large as crows, or even magpies.
  - trick-or-treat 4mo ago
    SE Asia
rkuska 4mo ago
I feed crows during winter in my local park. They recognize me as soon as I enter and follow me around. Some even fly very close above my head and tap me with a wing. Also they cache food they don't eat, they hide it, cover with leaves and make sure nobody is watching them, they act very casual. I am not sure if they remember the locations though. Compared to ravens they have smaller head but I believe it is because they spend so much time near people (at least here in Europe you don't see ravens in cities, they are afraid,for historical reasons, of people and low in numbers) they get smarter and more crafty. I can recommend a great book about corvids with beautiful illustrations: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122558/in-the-company-of-crows-and-ravens/ https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122558/in-the-company...
ale42 4mo ago
Did anyone else first read "the smartest COVID"?
- bell-cot 4mo ago
  Only far enough to know that the article is a bunch of short anecdotes. HN's comments include quite a few longer & better ones.
JR1427 4mo ago
I really recommend reading "Ravens in Winter" by Bernd Heinrich https://jake-reich.co.uk/blog/17 https://jake-reich.co.uk/blog/17
zetanor 4mo ago
I've never seen any corvid use React, so they must be pretty smart indeed.
anamax 4mo ago
https://imgur.com/anon-starts-world-war-crow-K63U5ig https://imgur.com/anon-starts-world-war-crow-K63U5ig
a96 4mo ago
Well, TIL that I have previously learned c corone and c cornix backwards. Possibly because I associated the hood with corona somehow. Though that all comes from a time they were all just called corvus corone cornix here.

159 points by NaOH 4mo ago

ball_of_lint 4mo ago

Probably Grip?

tejohnso 4mo ago

Chasing a bird of lesser intelligence so that it slams into an office building window seems especially cruel.

fortran77 4mo ago
Birds chase coyotes so they slam into the sides of cliff walls, sometimes even painting a fake tunnel to fool the coyote.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- tialaramex 4mo ago
  I believe that canonically the tunnel painting is made by the coyote, the problem is that because it's a cartoon the bird can run into the non-existent tunnel anyway and the coyote cannot because that's funnier. It is interesting that e.g. "Coyote time" was copied into platform games but in real life if you're not stood on solid ground you fall immediately 'cos Mother Nature doesn't give a shit what's more fun.
  - trick-or-treat 4mo ago
    Mother Nature isn't in charge of gravity. That's Papa Physics' job.
- ragazzina 4mo ago
  >Birds chase coyotes Does the bird ever even acknowledges the coyote?
  - GJim 4mo ago
    It does beep at it.
wavemode 4mo ago
A lot of crow hunting stories feel cruel to read about, though I wonder why that is. There is something about intelligence that seems to carry a degree of... moral responsibility, somehow? Though in reality it's just an animal eating another animal, as ever.
- avadodin 4mo ago
  Humans used to hunt animals by chasing them into pits and then punching holes into them with sticks until they bled out not to mention the many kinds of horrible traps for smaller prey animals. Humane hunting is mostly something that only a rich old guy with his night vision goggles and sniper rifle can afford. Even for farm animals, many cultures perform their sacrifice in ghastly ways.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- bee_rider 4mo ago
  Maybe something like this: Most animals hunt in a way that minimizes their odds of getting hurt, to the best of their ability. Crows are pretty smart, and not very strong in the grand scheme of things. So they engage in tactics that look like cruel manipulative pranks; causing the prey to somehow kill itself or get killed by something stronger. In the end, I think a gazelle doesn’t look up at the lion that killed it by outrunning it and the snapping its neck and say “Ah well, got me fair and square!”
  - technothrasher 4mo ago
    > a gazelle doesn’t look up at the lion that killed it by outrunning it and the snapping its neck I know this is tangential to your point, but lions don't really hunt that way. They ambush, as they could never outrun a gazelle, and then they don't snap its neck unless unintentionally. They tend to just start eating it while it is still alive. It's quite brutal to watch.
phyzome 4mo ago
How is it so different from, I don't know, directly grabbing it and tearing it apart? There are only so many ways they have to kill something (or injure it enough to allow killing it).
zavec 4mo ago
It definitely seems brutal, but when I stop and think about it it's actually probably more humane for the prey than getting eaten alive, right?

JohnMakin 4mo ago

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, a pretty sizable rock smacked the pavement next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. If it had hit my head I would have been hurt. I finally look up and see a big crow staring directly down at me - it had dropped it from the power lines, it had seemingly been intentional, maybe as a warning, I don't know. I attributed it to malice towards the vagrants that harass them. I was amazed at how much intelligence it would take to 1) form a grudge 2) form intent to threaten/harm, 3) formulate a plan using a weapon with cause -> effect to execute intent, 4) wait for opportunity. I have observed a lot of very intelligent behaviors from these birds but that was the wildest one. I have seen it happen once since, so I'm convinced it isn't an accident.

fritzo 4mo ago
By "sizable rock" do you mean large pebble or small boulder?
- JohnMakin 4mo ago
  A little larger than a golf ball.
  - redsocksfan45 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - IAmBroom 4mo ago
    Something that produces a loud exclamation in a movie character, but possible permanent brain damage IRL.
    - JohnMakin 4mo ago

noelwelsh 4mo ago

Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvmux_EqHTbbg0t https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat) has shown me there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way). Birds have higher neural density than mammals (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) so can pack a lot into their tiny heads. I do wonder what they'd have to say, if given the chance.

xfeeefeee 4mo ago
I started doing this with my cat. It's easy to try to explain away the underlying thought processes as coincidental association, and some of that is certainly true, but experiencing it first hand with a cat you know well is certainly different. My cat presses a button for his name when he wants attentions, buttons for outside, food, water. A button for YouTube (the startup sound), since he likes watching other cats and critter videos and nature documentaries on there. I was working in the other room during a stormy day and he was watching some nature video when I heard him repeatedly pressing the YouTube button and his name. But he was already watching it? When I went out there, I saw there was a video playing with a cat that looked almost exactly like him on the screen. He seemed extremely interested. Did he think it was him? Or was he just calling attention that it looked like him and wanted to tell me? Either way, never saw that behavior before or after.
drcongo 4mo ago
Who's a pretty boy?
SauntSolaire 4mo ago
I would be wary of extrapolating too much from the talking buttons. Review the clever hans effect and (the critiques of) Koko the gorilla for examples of people misattributing classical conditioning for intentionality. The fact is that humans are exceedingly quick to find patterns in random data (e.g. horescopes, any form of divination), and that tendency gets amplified when the opportunity to anthropomorphize a cute animal is presented.

Aboutplants 4mo ago

Wonderful timing. Me and my daughter just started to feed and befriend a crow in our backyard. We started by putting out a few pieces of cat foot, shaking the plastic container and tapping on the table we put it on to signal to the crow we had put out food. Within only 2 days the crow has learned to come and swoop down for his meal within just a minute or two after he does his normal fly-by passes. Now only about 5 days in, and we have the crow coming right down to eat as we put out the food, not much of a care that we are there. My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda. One thing I didn’t not really account for is that now in the morning when I step outside our new friend really lays on the noises of excitement as he knows a meal is about to be served.

IAmBroom 4mo ago
I'm hoping that is a typo for cat food, instead of training your cattle on horrifically scavenged body parts.
MisterTea 4mo ago
> My daughter wants to start training it to bring trinkets or coins so that is probably next on the agenda. Coins? Screw that. Go right to bills.
- m463 4mo ago
  bills are fragile, bitcoin might be better long-term.
  - mikestorrent 4mo ago
    Working on training my crowbuddy so that he bites the gold coins and only brings real ones, was getting too much iron pyrite
mikestorrent 4mo ago
I have been working on this as well and have a crowbuddy who enjoys what I feed him. I want him to do more, but haven't gotten him to yet. A couple years ago I was doing this and they brought me a chicken head as a gift. Thanks... I guess?

cubefox 4mo ago

Here is one playing ball: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw https://youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw This one is feeding a dog: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0

pflanze 4mo ago
> Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0 There was a video on youtube about a crow coming to a human and making that sound, also in winter with snow; commenters agreed that it was probably thirsty and was imitating running water that way to get the human to give it water. The human in the video didn't get that. But here in the end we can see the crow eating snow, which may confirm that it is really a way for crows tell when they are thirsty? Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" might be just testing the owl's capabilities for checking whether killing the owl to drink its blood would be an option? (I guess melting snow for water is increasing the risk for the crow to be cold & run out of energy.)
- HankB99 4mo ago
  > Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" I wonder if they're just amusing themselves (by being little jerks.) One day in early spring, I thought I heard a Red Tail Hawk screeching in a tree directly above me. I stood back, searching for it. I never spotted it despite the leaves barely out on the tree. But I did spot a Blue Jay hopping around some lower branches. When I got home I looked up Blue Jay behavior and found that they do imitate the calls of Red Tail Hawks, among others.
r721 4mo ago
I like this one: >Crow skiing down a roof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
- cubefox 4mo ago
  This one seems smarter than an average dog.

jujube3 4mo ago

Corvid-19 ?

NelsonMinar 4mo ago

If you like the idea of smart corvids, Adrian Tchaikovsky's scifi novel "The Children of Memory" is a fun read. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-memory https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...

werrett 4mo ago
And the just released “Palaces of The Crow” by Ray Nayler. I just finished it — really moving but also a brutal read in parts (c.f. because of what humans will do to each other not crows) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241392678 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241392678 > In Ray Nayler's speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl.

drcongo 4mo ago

Thanks to Merlin Bird ID, I've got rather into birds in the past few years. We have a robin and blackbird that hang out in the garden with us, seemingly unafraid. A couple of months back I bought a camera feeder [0] but we've still only had three bird types that visit - a coal tit who comes fairly infrequently but moves so fast the camera could easily be missing him, some amazing jackdaws who seem to take turns on the feeder, and some Eurasian magpies who are absolute fucking arseholes. I made the mistake of putting a mealworm / seed mix in the feeder once, and the mealworms were so prized by the magpies that they worked out how to empty it completely within minutes of me filling it, throwing all the seed that they weren't interested in on the floor. I've stopped putting mealworms in it now, but now they empty it just to make sure there's none in there. I'm going to have to take it down and try to fashion some kind of grate to make it much harder to get the seeds out. [0] https://naturespy.org https://naturespy.org - not the best resolution, but plenty good enough for up close video of the birds. I did a fair bit of research and loved the fact that these guys are a social enterprise who put their profits back into conservation projects. Highly recommended.

drcongo 4mo ago
Oh, and my other favourite corvid story - there's a guy that walks three very old dogs in my local park and he occasionally throws tiny treats down for them as they walk around. Crows started following him around the park for the treats the dogs missed, so then he started feeding them to the crows too, and now he walks slowly around the park with 3 old dogs and about 5 crows ambling along with him all in a fairly tight little group. I love crows.
sherr 4mo ago
Yes, magpies are very intelligent birds. Also very annoying! I don't like hearing their "cackling", especially if you're in bed trying to sleep. Magpies at mine also figured out how to feed from the wire-cylinder hanging feeder, meant for small birds. They flap their wings like crazy to hover for a few moments at the feeder and knock out the food or get to it. Clever birds. The pigeons just stand around below and scavenge ...
vintermann 4mo ago
Magpies certainly have a different temperament from crows. I tried to feed a local crow a few years ago, and while it was busy acting confused (you're giving this to me? Seriously?) a magpie swooped in for the treat. These days I'm on good terms with both. The magpies are easily bullied away by the crows, and I've learned the distinctly unfriendly noise they make when a crow comes close (three rapid, sharp chatters). I think they have a sound for me as well, a rising chi-chik very quietly. Probably to avoid announcing the arrival of the food guy to the crows.

MisterTea 4mo ago

> At least five such cases involved biologists: in Montana, Crow White ... Crow White is a hell of a name. Bravo to their parents.

panzagl 4mo ago
Montana is home to the Crow Reservation so it might be indigenous.
tialaramex 4mo ago
Humans are allowed to just change their names. It's not very common, especially in academics because your name is attached to your reputation, but it's not forbidden or even especially unusual. [And of course in several important cultures women are expected to change their name when they marry, although this seems like a terrible idea to me and in general I recommend against it] So it is entirely possible that they went "I think I will take the name Crow White, that's hilarious" and a PhD later they're a professor running research on corvids. Edited to add mention of cultural convention to change names on marriage.

davidee 4mo ago

We have a rather large number of Blue Jays that frequent our backyard. The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both. Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one. The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way. They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell. Fascinating. They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.

e40 4mo ago
We have two types jays that visit us. Scrub and Stellar. They come into the kitchen (door off the deck) to stand and sort through the bowl of peanuts in the shell. It’s hilarious to watch them go through them, finding the heaviest (?) ones, tossing the rejects to and fro. They’re completely unafraid of us. They are a great joy to watch.

metalman 4mo ago

My bet is on Ravens, who live a long time, and the ancients among them get a white flight feathers in the wings which I have seen once, up close in a nieghbors yard who was closer with the critters than humans. My fealing of ravens inteligence is based on there complex behaviors and one particular individual,who is bat shit insane, and makes the wildest strangest sounds and calls that are impossible to ignore for hours, but survives year to year, ie:dumb things never go crazy and or never survive there disfunctions. ravens also fly upside down regularly, and have been filmed pranking wolves by pulling there tails, and there is strong evidence for ravens working as spotters and leading wolves to easy/injured prey that the ravens get to clean up after the kill

weishe 4mo ago

[dead]

ggm 4mo ago

Australian Magpies are NOT corvid but Artamidae along with the butcherbird, but they are absolutely this intelligent. They hold court over their juvelines and enforce behaviour, and they mourn the passing of members of the community. I think it's possible the niche encourages large brains. A bit of nature not nurture maybe. They are tool users. And they can teach offspring lessons learned from humans, and recognize friend and foe. Well mostly: cyclists are routinely mis-cast as foe no matter what. This is why Australian cyclists look like demented wheelie porcupines: cable ties on the helmet keep the eye-peckers at bay.

Nursie 4mo ago
Love our magpies, we’ve been interacting with the local family for several years now and they trust us pretty well. Last year during fledging season their baby was near the side of the road, in the grass looking lost/hurt/exhausted, so some kind but misguided passers-by (it’s normal, they kick ‘em out of the nest to try and make them fly) picked it up and were going to take it to a wildlife hospital. Mum was watching them from a tree, quite distressed. I persuaded them I’d look after it and get help if needed, and took the baby back up to the house, then sat down outside and tried to give it back. Baby was by this point clutching my hand and nestling in to me. Mum wandered up, took a look at me holding her kid and I could almost imagine her saying “Ah, yeah you look after him for a while then, I need a break” because she seemed to relax, then went back to the other adults and had a feed before coming back for him!

erkt 4mo ago

I still can't enter a corvid thread without looking for some Unidan copypasta.

knollimar 4mo ago
The jackdaw is the smartest corvid because it ragebaits people on the internet

chasd00 4mo ago

Once as a kid I was at my cousin’s ranch outside of Waxahachie Texas. I was sitting on the steps to his house eating a sandwich when a crow landed about 10 feet away and hopped right up to me. I gave it some of my sandwich and it just flew off. It was very strange, it didn’t seem to fear me at all and just wanted a bite. I told my aunt and she was shocked and not aware of any tame crows at all.

voidUpdate 4mo ago

I really like crows and magpies. Crows especially do little hops when they run around and it always makes me smile. I've wanted to make friends with the ones around me for a while but I haven't yet

braggerxyz 4mo ago

I live next to a farm in a rural town. We have lots of cats around which are necessary to keep the rodents in check. Our cats love to play their prey to death in our yard (yeah nature is cruel). Some of the local crows know how to get the dead mice from the cats. One or two crows distract the cat, the cat likes to chase the crows for the thrill of the hunt, and then one crow swoops in and steals the cats prey. The cats are always bamboozled when this happens and we watch and laugh. Really smart these feathered freaks :D I leave shelled peanuts and other bird feed out in the winter, and is fascinating to watch the crows and magpies to crack them open, feed on some of them, then grab two shelled peanuts and fly off with them. They already recognize me coming out in the winter mornings with the bird feed and peanut bags. They wait patiently in the surrounding trees until I'm in the house again. They even see me through the windows watching them and only come down to feed once I am out of sight for them. Truly remarkable. We also have some pairs of red kites in our area which circle over our fields for prey. The crows don't like them and will try to chase them away, mostly in packs of two to three crows. They are 99% successful in chasing the red kites away because they are more agile in the air and can do more complex flight manouvers. But once one of the crows got to close to the claws of the kite and was killed instantly and dropped down dead. What happened then was even more fascinating. The whole flock of crows gathered around their dead companion and maybe "mourned"? I don't know how to else explain it. Next winter I will try to befriend them even more, they are so fascinating!

the-grump 4mo ago
Thank you for sharing these wonderful stories!
grousewood 4mo ago
I've heard the crow "funeral" is an information gathering strategy. Figuring out what killed it, what risks are in the area, how to mitigate it happening again. Very clever!
- jihadjihad 4mo ago
  The irony of a group of crows being called a murder while they are gathered for a funeral, going over their own post mortem of a fallen comrade.

trick-or-treat 4mo ago

In my part of the world there's a cuckoo that pulls a heist on crows where the male makes annoying noises and the crows chase him off while the female cuckoo invades the nest and leaves an egg. When the egg hatches the bird inside looks nothing like a crow but the crow mama never catches on and pays child support until it's grown. That cuckoo gets my vote for cleverest.

vintermann 4mo ago
What part of the world is that? I don't think European cuckoos target birds as large as crows, or even magpies.
- trick-or-treat 4mo ago
  SE Asia

rkuska 4mo ago

I feed crows during winter in my local park. They recognize me as soon as I enter and follow me around. Some even fly very close above my head and tap me with a wing. Also they cache food they don't eat, they hide it, cover with leaves and make sure nobody is watching them, they act very casual. I am not sure if they remember the locations though. Compared to ravens they have smaller head but I believe it is because they spend so much time near people (at least here in Europe you don't see ravens in cities, they are afraid,for historical reasons, of people and low in numbers) they get smarter and more crafty. I can recommend a great book about corvids with beautiful illustrations: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122558/in-the-company-of-crows-and-ravens/ https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122558/in-the-company...

ale42 4mo ago

Did anyone else first read "the smartest COVID"?

bell-cot 4mo ago
Only far enough to know that the article is a bunch of short anecdotes. HN's comments include quite a few longer & better ones.

JR1427 4mo ago

I really recommend reading "Ravens in Winter" by Bernd Heinrich https://jake-reich.co.uk/blog/17 https://jake-reich.co.uk/blog/17

zetanor 4mo ago

I've never seen any corvid use React, so they must be pretty smart indeed.

anamax 4mo ago

https://imgur.com/anon-starts-world-war-crow-K63U5ig https://imgur.com/anon-starts-world-war-crow-K63U5ig

a96 4mo ago

Well, TIL that I have previously learned c corone and c cornix backwards. Possibly because I associated the hood with corona somehow. Though that all comes from a time they were all just called corvus corone cornix here.