Why Crows Are as Smart as 7 Year Old Humans 

I actually had a New Caledonian crow do my taxes for me this year. His beak was a little hard on the keyboard of my computer, but his rates were very reasonable.

The wolf/raven relationship goes even deeper than described here. Ravens have been witnessed finding suitable prey and signaling to wolf packs by cawing loudly. In other words, the ravens act as spotters for the wolves who then allow the ravens to scavenge part of the resulting kill.

The ability to hold a grudge and shit on the same person's car for years is actually hilarious

I heard a story about a woman and her young daughter who had a flock of crows in the trees outside their house. Her toddler had dropped her chicken nuggets and the crows came and took them to eat. The little girl loved them and loved to feed them and they set up a feeder and bird bath for them. The mother was a photographer, and she was working a few miles away from home. She was photographing something outside and she had taken the lens cover off and it fell to the ground. Since she was busy getting her pictures she decided to pick it up later after she was done. She forgot about the lens cover completely. When she arrived at her house, the lens cover was sitting on her front porch. The crows had followed her to her work site and had picked up the lens cover when she forgot to. They frequently leave little gifts for them in the bird bath. Little trinkets and shiny pieces of refuse. That story always stuck with me for some reason.

We once found a dying crow fledgling and brought it in and started giving it medicine. It was something we had done for many other animals including birds before. This little fellow was the first one who didn't resist drinking the medicine and actually cooperated with us in every step of the treatment. To our surprise, it worked and the little fellow got better. Only within a few days we realized that it was capable of a human-like relationship. Sitting with us watching TV for hours while demanding strokes and kisses on his head, getting angry when we turned our back to him (or her), throwing tantrums by picking up stuff and throwing them all around when left unattended and letting us know where he was hiding when he realized we were looking for him (even when we weren't calling him). He eventually got so good at ransoming us by throwing tantrums that we left him in the balcony to stop him from getting bored and one day (nearly 40 days after bringing him in) we only came out to see him gone and tens of crows surrounding our house! It was as if they were asking what was our baby doing in your house? We never saw him again and I still regret leaving him in the balcony although maybe that was the best for him. I've had many many pets and I loved them all. But, this crow was the only one who seemed like a human trapped in the body of a bird. I miss him so much.

In one set of experiments I believe conducted in Sweden, one of the test subject crows actually hacked the puzzle box. There was some black box mechanism where inserting trash into one end would cause the machine to dispense food out the other. Well this clever guy managed to jam a stick inside the feeding mechanism, breaking the machine and releasing all the food. They had to remove him from the experiment.

Similar to the raven/wolf interaction, it's not uncommon in Greenland to see ravens during caribou season. They will usually circle above you and when you spot them, fly off into the direction of the caribou where they will circle above them. After you shoot the deer, you toss the guts to the ravens as a form of gratitude (and reward). As someone else mentioned, this is functionally a military drone.

A young crow once started interacting with us in our garden. It started by fetching things and playing tug of war with sticks. Once we got out a pack of nuts, it did everything to get its beak into it. We started hiding the nuts but that thing would always find the hiding spots. Once I was watching over the nuts and the crow started stealing gloves out of my Rucksack and would drop them at the other end of the Garden. As soon as I retrieved the glove, the crow had free access to the nuts. I just didn't anticipate getting fooled by a crow...

"Even human children can't do this, and neither can many of the adults I know," Best line ever.

I've once seen a crow landing on a sidewalk. The crow then checked the street for incoming cars by looking left and right. The street was clear, so the crow walked on foot to the opposite sidewalk. I remember how impressed I was by that intelligent behavior and at the same time I was asking myself why the crow did not just fly over the street.

I believe this wolf crow interaction. I rescued a hatchling blue jay. Taught it to fly, hunt, sing, and survive in the wild. He was free to come and go as he wished, but formed a bond with not only my human family but our dog. This was a dog who would eat most anything small or furry, but he and pidgy used to hang out all the time. One day we had a BBQ and we had a guest who no one in my house liked, a friend of my father's. When he walked onto the property my dog walked up to him, lifted his leg, and urinated on him. At the exact same time Pidgy flew over and pooped on his head. Neither animal had ever done anything like that before and both exited in opposite directions. It was the wildest thing I've ever seen.

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't" I've always found it amazing that when you look at galaxies strung across the universe in long filaments they resemble a brains intricacies

Only about halfway through but it's making me think of another thing I've heard over the years about these wonderful birbs. They apparently will investigate fellow crows' deaths. I guess they'll try to understand why there's a dead crow and deliberate the cause as to avoid it themselves. I know cows and elephants apparently mourn but these dudes out there analytically spectating their deceased. Brilliant. I love it.

I’ve been feeding the same group of ten or so crows for the last few years. We are daily walking companions, and will comfortably hang out together. Just the other day a crow was perched outside of my bedroom window and was frantically cawing at my wife and I. It would caw twice, and then rapidly stare downward. It would then look back at us, caw twice again and then stare down below. (We are on the second floor) it was trying to get our attention! My wife walked to the window and the crow looked at her, and looked down again (like a hunting dog that points, if that makes sense) and there was this giant fat raccoon meandering about. Once we saw it, the crow almost chirped, and the flew off. We were warned of the danger! So cool!

In Australia I worked on a grain storage site during the outloading season, and a group of magpies started to try to train me 😄. The grain was stored in huge piles on top of plastic groundsheets. As the grain emptied out, I would remove the groundsheet in sections using a telehandler. The best way to do this was to lift a chunk of the sheet as high as possible by extending the hydraulic arm completely. As full extension was reached, the hydraulics would let a sort of whistle/squeak, and I would then swing the vehicle to the side and begin folding the sheet into a manageable section. Of course, this is when the mice would be increasingly uncovered, and then would sprint back to the next section of groundsheet, and the magpies would swoop in from their perches. After about two months of doing repeated groundsheet trims every week or so, I noticed that the magpies were making strange sounds as I walked to the telehandler in the morning. They were mimicking the sound of the hydraulic arm as it came to full extension. It was a social communication in which they were inquiring and perhaps encouraging me to go out a cut a groundsheet. Or perhaps they were just saying hello in the language they thought I used 😂 Notably there also a kite (hawk) that hung around the place and hunted for mice. It too would watch for my telehandler to lift up a groundsheet and would sit on the grain pile's peak, waiting for the "buffet" to start. However, he never attempted any communication and only arrived when the process began, whereas the magpies began "talking" to me first thing in the morning when work started, long before I would cut any sheets.

Crows also pass the test for self aware consciousness. They are aware of their awareness and know what they are.

Something to note: corvids (like crows and ravens) have a short lifespan, imagine how much wisdom they would accrue over their lifetimes if they lived as long as humans or elephants!

Amazing presentation. I had a crow who was knocked out of her nest by larger siblings. She had just begun to grow feathers when I found her in my driveway. This was in Van Nuys, California in the early 1990s. I fed her baby bird food, a dry cereal product you mix with hot water to prepare. I used an eyedropper to squirt it into her mouth. She grew up to be a healthy female crow. She would stay with me perched on my shoulder just like parrots do. She was my constant companion for many years. She even learned to say "hello" when I would see her after being out. I named her Jamima. We had many adventures together. We ended up moving to San Diego, to El Cajon, a rather wild desert sort of environ with sage and brush. In the winter Jamima would stay in the garage, sitting up in the rafters. In summer she stayed on an outside tall table with a perch across the top. I had a large cardboard shipping box that I would put over her at night to keep predators away. It was at this location that Jamima finally left me. I came home from a movie late one evening around dusk. She wasn't sitting atop the garage eve where she would usually wait for me to get home. I was baffled, I called her name out for hours that night. I was devastated at her loss. The next morning just after dawn I heard Jamima cawing out in the front of the house. I ran outside and there she was bobbing her head up and down 0n top of a street lamp, obviously excited about something. I put out my arm and called to her to come on down. She just kept chattering and dancing around. After about 5 minutes of this a big black male crow swooped in low over Jamima circled and Jamima lifted up and flew off over the chaparral across the street. My best friend had eloped! About 3 months later I heard Jamima cawing excitedly out front one morning. I ran out and there she was sitting on a low branch of a tree across the street. Again she was literally doing the bop and chattering excitedly. I stood there amazed, calling out "what's up Jamima? You came home!" Finally she lifted up off the branch and flew up about 12 feet above the road. At that point three young crows flew up to meet her from the chaparral. She had brought her babies to show me! I was then so happy for her. I understood my Jamima as she understood me. About four months later my wife brought home a small parrot, a Green-cheeked Conure. I named her Deeter. Deeter passed away, but I still have an African Gray named Peeper, that has lived with me for 29 years now.

the question everyone should be asking is “why are 7 year olds as smart as crows”

I have 4 generations of crow's living at the back of my property. And have two dogs. One of which will chase them & the other just sits there watching them. The crow's know which dog they can trust. And there's a magpie family in the tree next to the crow's & they help each other baby sitting when the partners are off getting food. I've seen the Crow defend the magpie & chick's & the magpie defend the crow's chick's.

I have an African grey, and he’s almost scary smart. When presented with a new toy he asked” what that is?” He made up a sentence. He also tried to sneak up on my daughter by walking with his back to her. I guess he thought if he couldn’t see her, she couldn’t see him lol.

I saved a huge baby crow from a stalking feral cat one day before it learned to fly...the mother hovered nearby. Two days later the pair of them flew up to me and 'showed me' he could now take-off and fly successfully although still clumsy...I have always watched and listened to crows after this. In fact I think I occasionally still see this crow around making his presence known to me. I've had many pets but birds are a very penetrating kind of bonding with humans.

When I first saw them throwing nuts on the street and then waiting for cars to crack them, I was utterly shocked of how smart they are. Love these guys

Fascinating and beautiful. I "raised" a baby Stellars Jay. He visited me every day, for about a year and a half, and I fed him peanuts from my hand. This winter, I didn't see him for months and was really sad. I was worried about him. But, he came back and I only see him every so often now. I'm glad he's independent and wild, but I miss him. His name is Woody, named after Woody Allen, because when I met him, he seemed so neurotic and he scratched at his head and was molting. He's now a beautiful, strong, independent, male Jay and I wish him the best and lots of love. Love my local crows and birds. Brings me joy, everyday.

so here's a little story of how I was outsmarted by a gang of juvenile crows when I was about 5-7 years old maybe.. I was a little kid playing at the park and minding my own business when a crow approached me and kept teasing me and then jumping a little backwards.. kept doing that and I tried to get it to leave me alone but it kept coming back.. till I got frustrated with it so I sprinted at it to make it fly away once and for all, but little did I know that it was luring me into a muddied field, and as you can imagine I skid and landed in the mud and was covered in it almost from head to toe. I stood up between the laughs of all the crow gang. YES! they were definitely all laughing at me!! I had a hard time explaining all of this to my mom.. I can only imagine now that she probably was not so impressed with her little kid! lol !! Since then I've always known how smart those beautiful cheeky buggers are!

For a couple years there was an active construction zone next to my house. And every day after construction ceased around 200 crows would descend onto the site, walk around on the unfinished condos and hang out together in the interjoining space. It was fascinating watching them "mingle" in a large group and seeing individuals break off to play or chase one another. My ex-wife didn't care much for the constant cawing-but I loved it! It felt much like people watching. Those crows gave me hours of entertainment just staring out my window. 😊

I’ve always loved crows and the more I learn about them I’m never very surprised. I like seeing them fly upside down just for fun. Beyond cool birds.

I adore crows because of their intelligence. I'd love to be on a bit of land again to try and connect with them. It's fascinating seeing them being pushed to the limits of their problem solving intelligence, kind of like me trying to understand the depths of particle physics haha.

I’ve been feeding the same 20 crows for the past 5 years. An interesting and complex relationship has formed between us. Not to the point where I can handle them, but we’re in a comfortable space together, and I can approach them up to about 2 feet before they hop, or fly. (Honestly, I don’t want to handle them anyway, as they’re wild birds that shouldn’t be too habituated to humans for their own safety.) Every morning they arrive at 6:00 for breakfast (I haven’t slept-in in 5 years, but it’s alright), which can be dog kibble, ‘Armstrong’ brand unsalted peanuts in the shell, or occasionally diced chicken hearts. Their numbers climb up to over 150 during the coldest months, as best as I can count, and down to around 20 in the spring and summer. They are incredibly communicative with me, and even follow me in the trees when I walk to the store down the road. Edit: two of them even helped me find my missing cat once!

"Neither can many adults I know" I was waiting for but absolutely not expecting this savagery.

Incredible higher level content. Thank you!! Keep it coming. You’re doing something special.

I said "I Love You" to a crow and the crow said I Love You back. I need to say that more often to my wife...

You can tell how smart crows are as they never really get hit by cars. They know they can just hop past the white line on the side of the road and they are safe from the passing car.

When I was 8-9yrs old I had a blackbird that flew into my window. he took my chewing gum stuck to the headboard of my bed. It brought back a tab for a soda can and left it on my bed. I started leaving bits of food out for him/her. It would bring me all kinds of small things. Our apartment had a balcony and we would leave the door open when the weather was nice. The blackbird would fly in and walk around on the coffee table. He would stay and watch TV with us. We would leave food and water out for him while he visited with us. Sometimes he would walk/hop onto my leg as I sat on the couch, but I never touched him. He did that until we moved away a year later. That was 50yrs ago and I will never forget it.

Thanks for making this video, we love all our bird friends especially Magpies and Butcher Birds here in Australia. They have become friends for life as they come to the house and sing for their supper. We have a bird hierarchy at feeding time, firstly the Magpie couple will eat, followed by the Butcher birds, then the Shrikes and lastly the Parrots (mostly Lorikeets). The Magpies will even act as the security if a fight breaks out and restore the pecking order. Also worth checking out the Australian Magpie song if you have never heard it, our birds have a special song they sing to let us know they have arrived and are waiting for a feed.

I fed a crow once,and now it caws to me every morning.It actually waits on a pole outside my house every morning and will fly down for me to feed it.I also have the suspicion that it drives away most of the stray cats that come near my house..It is indeed a very smart bird

We had a wild born blinded adult crow live with us, as a pet, from 2005 to 2015. She adapted to living with us within 10 minutes and developed a system of complex mimes, along with crow noises, to communicate. She discovered that leaving meat marinating in her water bowl, into which she had placed a few dozen chocolate flavoured cereal flakes, would make the meat taste nicer, if left for a few hours. She'd spend some time preparing meat like this. She never talked, but understood a lot of English and could respond to questions (usually menu choices). Her favourite activities were being petted, sunbathing, communicating with other crows, playing & eating.

"SCRAW" - an intellectual

I saw a crow standing in the middle of the street with a squirrel once and I would have bet my life they looked like they were having a conversation. It really was abnormal looking and after seeing this I wonder if the crow was "pals" with the squirrel to take advantage of the squirrels foraging now

Thank you for beautifully put the information out there with easy to understand informative video.

our backyard hens would run off any other bird that tried to look for food in our yard. The local crows would sit on the fence and watch them. One day the crows were eating with the chickens. They *acted* like the chickens. Scratching and pecking, bobbing their heads, and the chickens just accepted them. It was wild.

Amazing! Moved to rural nova scotia and been feeding a crow regularly. He now comes out when I call his name!

Thank you for this channel, free education at levels people don't even realize how good. thank you

Great video! Thank you❤ I'm glad there's people like you who admire nature, it's fascinating

I once had an office with a view onto a roof covered with small-sized rock/pebbles. One day I saw a crow land on the roof with a piece of bread. It looked around to make sure no other bird was watching, picked up a few pebbles to make a hole, put the bread in, covered it with pebbles, then added a piece of moss, maybe to mark the exact location? The next morning, I was back at work and watched the crow land on the roof, move the moss and the pebbles and recover the piece of bread. The crow had found food, made a plan to hide the food for the future, hid it, and remembered to come back the next day and recover it. I thought that was pretty impressive.

In Seattle, it's interesting to watch the rival gangs of seagulls and crows fight. The crows are more crafty, but the gulls are much bigger, so you'll see crows often engage in creating distractions for other crows to steal food, while the gulls will swarm in groups and bully the crows out of the way. One gull can take on two or three crows, so it's a classic brains vs. brawn conflict. I suspect that's part of the reason why their intelligence developed: they're often in conflict with much larger scavengers like racoons, gulls, possums, and coyotes, so they need smarts to compete.

This was a really great video. Well done

The transition to the ad was smooth and well thought

I literally watched a crow commit suicide. It was likley ill and had wanted relief. I was driving on a back road in Washington state and saw a crow that was perched on a wire fly down directly in front of a front tire of an oncoming car going toward me. I was stunned at that because crows are well aware of cars and what the wheels can do. They are smart and to just drop right in front of a car's tire is insane. I believe it takes some cognizance to understand death and it's occasional advantages.

When I was 7 and walking home with grandma, we heard these loud crow sounds. We looked up and saw two crows fighting with a group of them watching and screeching at them. Crow#1 came up to a tree on top of us and the avenue and yelled at crow#2, so it followed to continue the fight. Little to no cars were passing by at the time. Suddenly, almost out of a scene in the lion king, crow#1 lunged, grabbed crow#2 by the neck and wings, then threw him downwards to the ground, exactly before a huge truck passed. Crow #1 flew to safety and simply looked as crow #2 fell and got struck by the truck, immediately getting killed. My grandma and another person looking exclaimed, "did that crow just murder the other one?". It could have been accidental but the whole thing almost looked like crow#1 planned it. Another curious thing was how a group of the crows came down from the tree, unafraid of us humans and just looked at their dead friend for a while. I was worried they would walk closer to him, yet they wouldn't come near it, fully knowing more cars could come by. After this video, I'm 95% sure it was a planned murder

I once kept hearing quacking from a duck in my backyard. Which is weird because here's no water nearby. I got confused as i could not find the duck but the quacking continued... Turned out it was a crow trolling me.

Mum and Dad call a crow (actually a magpie) that visit their home "Smarty Pants" after they rescued him after he bounced off one of their windows. Never really understood why they chose that name until my dad later told me he planted corn and the bird knew exactly every location of the seed and they were all gone before they had a chance to sprout. To this day "Smarty Pants" seems to like visiting them... and they appreciate him for it too.

One summer evening while stopped at a traffic light I noticed some crows chasing rabbits in the adjacent park. At first I wasn't sure what they were up to, rabbits are too large to be usual prey for a crow. I watched them for quite a while before I realized the crows were trying to chase the rabbits into traffic.

One very early morning (around 5:45 am), a few years ago in Los Angeles, we were awoken by a loud noise on our balcony. At that time we had a cat named Zuki. I went to the living room to check on all the commotion and I saw my cat, sitting on top of the balcony rail, casually "chatting" with a huge raven. It was so amazing to see the raven cawing, the cat listening, and then the cat "responding". I dismissed the whole encounter as a one-time occurrence. Boy was I wrong! Every Saturday (😩) for the next 2 years, the raven came to chat with Zuki at that same time. I didn't even want to check anymore. We knew it was the raven on our balcony for the weekly chat with our cat. I thought, maybe the fact that our cat was almost all-black attracted the raven trying to figure out what kind of raven he was... or maybe they were really communicating and became friends. I always wondered what the heck they were talking about... 🐱

A very well done and insightful post.

One interesting fact on the experiment they did ,The " thirsty crow story " was an Indian folk story about a crow using stones to reach water from a vase and this was discovered by archeologists depicted on a vase painting at the ancient Harrapan city in India about 4000 BC.

I remember once a Raven landed in a tree nearby. I was excited and threw a morsel of food. It didn't see the food, so I threw a second bit. It didn't see that, so I threw a third bit of food. Then the bugger flew down and accurately picked up all three pieces of food.

Great content, thanks for sharing these amazing facts.

We were camping at the grand canyon years ago and one morning I was the first to wake up. I looked up through the mesh part at the center of the tent and there was a raven on a branch seemingly looking at me. I didn't think much about it and after a few minutes started to get up. The raven above started making noise and it sounded like hell had broken loose all around the tent. When I got outside, I found our trash strewn all over the campsite. Only then did I realize that the raven on the branch was the lookout while the rest of his buddies quietly ate our garbage. It's an impressive level of understanding and cooperation, since the lookout was forgoing at least part of a meal to maximize the group's yield. I cleaned up the campsite and we secured our trash better after that.

You should check out the experiment were they showed that crows can pass knowledge from generation to generation using a masked man who threatened the parent's nests. Even in cases where the chicks never experienced the masked man, yet even when the parents had died over winter, the next year the once chicks squacked and screamed at the masked man, but the grown chicks of other crows did not. It was really a pretty freaky experiment.

I once had a raven as a friend. It seemed sad when I had to move away, so I gave a lot of love before moving away. 7 years later I was visiting my old home when Nightcrawler, the same raven friend that I hadn’t seen in years, comes up to me and lands on my arm. I know it was him, because he had a scar on his left eye and was blind there. But he somehow recognized me, and I was overjoyed. He unfortunately passed a year ago, but I still remember him very fondly. This was hard to write, I’m crying again oh no… I think nightcrawler had a really special way of communicating with other species. He’d sit with my dog and taught her how to catch rabbits, would seemingly converse with crows, and was a very proficient tool user. I was able to teach him a little bit as I was 6 at the time so we were around the same brain level. I might’ve taught him about strength of different tools by demonstration. Corvinas are really good with memory, and will remember things for close to a decade. Crows have already entered a Neolithic-like era, and are using canines much like we did thousands of years ago. If humans go to other planets I think we should also bring these wonderful, curious and intelligent little buggers with us. I think they will one day be on the level of human intelligence.

Wow this is so Amazing thank you for this video ❤

They are so beautiful and smart! Thank you for this video!

I found an injured crow one morning, some years ago. I took it into my home and contacted a wildlife rescue. They were unable to come pick up the crow until like 11pm that night. This crow spent only one day with me, but by the time I went to hand it over to the rescuer, it was nuzzling me like a cat and giving me kisses. It was leaned against my body and didn't want to go with the other person. Also, I say "hello friend" to every single crow I meet, and I am convinced that ONE DAY, one of them is gonna say it back 🤣🤣🤣

One of my Grandfathers called the crows his friends. We gardened all those years with no thought of crow damage. When my Granpa passed, the crows took a great toll on the garden produce. While Granpa was alive, I never understood what he meant by, "The crows are my friends."

They are so adorable. I love them.

Informative, thank you 🙂🙋‍♂️

Hello! If anyone here is from India, they will surely remember the childhood story of how a fictional crow dropped several stones into a pit to raise the water level so as to make it drinkable for the crow. Now I realise where that story came from. We always knew crows are smart!

I raised a raven. I can tell you why they need to be smarter. It's because it's how they get food. They aren't hunters, they are more of a scavenger, and they use their brains to figure out how to get food. They don't like to work very hard for it, they'd rather play all day 😄

A study was done with crows and scaring them with a masked person , they came back a year later and found the chicks of the scared crows knew and recognized the masked person . It was found that crows pass information genetically, and that is why they are so smart.

I didn't know first hand just how smart crows are , i mean I've seen videos here of crows displaying their intelligence. But its mostly human raised crows. I had an interesting experience with wild crows just the other day. On my lunch break I usually grab a tuna fish sandwich from 7/11 in small town called Kentlands. When I eat there I always see crows hanging around. So what I don't eat i give to them. Well I ran out of food to give them one day after feeding them. They started verbally trying to communicate with me. Making the sounds they were staring at me sitting in my car. Next thing i knew one landed on top of my car and I could hear it tapping on my car over my head. As to say keep feeding me. I was intrigued on just how aggressive they were One in particular. So I didn't pay it much attention . I drove off about 300 yards to another part of parking lot. As I sat there the same crow starting crowing .. I looked up it was the same crow that was on top of my car. It was maybe 6 feet from my car on a branch look ing at me and it was branch vocalizing . Making that distinctive crowing sound. Looking at me sitting in my car. The Bird followed my car to other side of Plaza. It wa s looking at me . I couldn't believe the bird actually followed me. It wanted more food and it was trying to communicate that to me . Most bizarre experience I've ever had with a crow. So intelligent. I'm quite certain they can distinguish cars and people. T hey definitely remember me and my car. Crazy but it's true. The Bird actually followed my car as I drove.

Here in Australia crows are one of the few birds that don't do humans. By that I mean that magpies and butcher birds will come to your door and beg for food (and usually get it lol), and eventually become friends for years. Crows don't. Any large car park here will have a large gang of crows that occupy it, but they don't beg for food. They live off our waste, but begging is beneath them. I've always respected them for that. Much as I'd like to befriend some haha.

I have crow bros at my house. I feed them scraps, and they'll bring me twigs and shiny objects. It's pretty great. I even got to hold one in my hands after it flew into the house and couldn't get out, but it let me pick it up and carry it out. I called him Edgar Allan Crow.

I've seen crows drop walnuts on the street for cars to run over, here in Vienna. We've only had crows in the city in any numbers for about forty years. I admire them, but I must admit that they are helping to drive the songbirds out. Well done, thanks. Merry Christmas from Austria, Scott

I loved this video u guys did r thing congrats and keep making the content you guys do it is very good and amazing thank you

Always have been fascinated by crows and ravens. I was a Wildlife Rehabilitator for years in Oregon. I knew those birds were smarter that previously thought. My late husband used to regale me with stories of a raven his mother fostered when he was a boy. It came and went as it wanted. He’d have a field day torturing the neighborhood dogs and cats by dive bombing them, grabbing their tails and letting them pull him along like a water skier. Bouncing along with feet hitting the ground now and again as the host ran like he had the hounds of hell attached to their tail. A neighbor lady was scared of him. He came to visit one day while she was hanging out clothes to dry, she started throwing things at him to make him leave. He thought this was rather rude of her and devised many different methods to pay her back. One of his favs was to go along and unclip the clothes pins and watch her laundry hit the dirt one by one and just cackle and cackle after each piece dropped. Sometimes he’d start unclipping them while she was hanging them up, forced her to get a broom to run him off, him cackling the whole time. Great stories. But from all the stories I’ve heard, and my interactions with them, I knew they pretty damn intelligent.

I remember when my daughter was very young, this one particular crow would come by and hop on the edge of the roof when she would play outside. This went on for three or four years, and she called him Crow Friend. It definitely felt like they were spending time together. It was pretty interesting.

Would like to see more like this on this subject.

In this video, there was a point that talked about crows helping picking up trash. I agree with why it's a good thing with one additional point. It is much better for any bird to you have to work for their food, for example just leaving food out for birds can make them reliant on that simple source of food and forage less for food. So there is actually more harm just leaving food out than having them work for it. Thank you for a great video on Corvids!

One of my term essays in college was hypothesizing about intelligence as a convergent evolutionary trait, basically, intelligence is one of the few traits that is almost universally beneficiary so it's shown up in several distant clades. I used elephants, cetaceans, and octopuses as my examples. No matter the environment, being clever makes it easier to get food and dodge predators. Two connections I found with intelligence were with dexterity and advanced capabilities for cooperative problem-solving, to the extent that they can form functional relationships with other species to accomplish a goal. Was one of my favorite essays!

Just FYI, not sure why you cut away from the u-tube trail before the crow figured it out. The researchers deemed it successfully completed as, after observing both tubes having a rock dropped in it, they correctly selected the tube that pushed the food up. Trial and error isn’t a failure, it’s learning

Stephanie is such a good narrator. ♥️👍💯

You are way underestimating these birds!!!

I read somewhere the crows trained to pickup cigarettes started to pick up other items of similar size and weight to game the automated system. Amazing how smart they are.

As a child, around 5 or 6 yrs, I made friends with a crow at my apartment building in Burbank California. It just appeared one day, and just watched me play in the dirt with my hot wheels. I barely paid attention to it, and when I went inside I left my toys in the dirt under my window. The next few days it would show up late afternoon, and hopp around and turn it's head side to side and mutter. Anyways, I found one day my favorite cars was gone, lost. Days later it was back and another was missing, I caught it returning a missing truck in the evening and I just accepted the situation, as only a child can do.We would play from afar, but never to 'close'. I don't remember what happened to it, my memory fades as to that tidbit, but it's a fond Memory.

Exelent content. Thank you!

It's worth mentioning that parrots are comparably intelligent to corvids and capable of a lot of the same feats. They each have their own interesting (and amazing) specializations though; Both use tools, although crows seem to do it more often and be a bit better at it. Their social intelligence is similar, although parrots tend to be a bit more socially developed (and dependent). Both are great at mimicry, parrots can even learn associated meanings with words (there's been some amazing research on these capabilities specifically with African grey parrots, which are the most intelligent parrot species). Bird intelligence is mind blowing to me

I lived in the high Arctic and there were an insane amount of ravens. When I first moved in I threw out a 40 foot piece of brown packing wrap into a big box just outside my house. The ravens kept coming and pulling the long piece of paper out and wrapped it around the front and side of my place over and over and over again. I found it so funny and so cute. Another raven pulled a whole loaf of bread out of the tiniest opening on top of a box that was in the back of a truck. It took off with the entire loaf. Anyone who moves gets the raven initiation where about 12-15 ravens hang out on your metal roof making you think someone in breaking in. After the first time it just wakes you up but that first time is scary asf.

We have a trio of crows living in our neighborhood. We sometimes give them peanuts. We also groom our dogs ourselves and leave the fur out for them and they always take it. We love watching them. We’ve seen them chase away a bunch of hawks from the neighborhood too.

Wonderful, liked and subscribed.

In 2017 a family of crows (I assume father, mother and a juvenile) began hanging out on the trees outside my door. I was able to whistle a call they would do amongst themselves, very specific, no cawing, high pitch. One day, while they were flying above my house and I mimicked a seagull call. One of the adults left and about a minute later, he came back followed by a real seagull! My son witnessed this. In 2019, I started to mimic a cawing that big crows did around the small town where I work (80 miles from home). After a few days, I was at a gas station and I heard the cawing, I mimicked it and all of the sudden, a single huge feather came flying down from a tree. I rushed to pick it up. I smelled and it had a really light scent. There was a young couple getting gas that witnessed the whole ordeal. I admire crows.

I work at a garden shop and I've Developed a relationship with a few crows, i'm getting pretty close with them. it's fascinating how intelligent they are, being able to recognize me in particular rather than the other workers, even followed me home once

i love this video. scientific stuff about the brain is super interesting to me and that in combination with crows is just awesome!

Ravens are beloved animals of our nation, Iceland. I have always been fascinated by them.

Humans: let’s make a “human figure” out of straw to scare the crows Crows: 🤣🤣😂👏🏻

"Delayed gratification and planning are high-order skills. Human children can't do this, and neither can many of the adults I know." Lol, Stephanie is throwing shade!

4:20 This part hit hard. Time to step up on my planning for the future lol

Excellent documentary. A lot of different studies are discussed, and the questions you raise in the different parts help structure the video. The text is spoken clearly and at a good pace. The videos are fitting to the topic currently under discussion. All these things make the presentation engaging. 5 out of 5. At 11:11 Why do you equate the intelligence of new Caledonian crows with the social intelligence of primates? Who says their social intelligence is similar? The tests mentioned in previous parts of the video do not test social intelligence, they test problem solving intelligence. Generally i think the field of animal behaviour and the study of intelligence suffers from this type on convolution of different things. There can be intelligence of different types useful for different situations. We tend to measure those areas that we humans excel at and equate them with 'general intelligence'. I think this hinders progress in understanding (or even recognizing) intelligence in other species.

I would love to see someone teach a crow to use those buttons that pets can learn to talk with. I've been blown away by the things cats and dogs have said and asked their humans about. It would be cool to see just how much they comprehend.

I have lived with parrots for more than 34 years. Having such a close living situation and decades of building relationship with birds gives real insight into not only how smart but how they naturally behave and how they adapt to life with humans in a house. My first bird a cherry head conure just passed away a week ago. I’m still reeling. We had our own language, he said some words a lot like hi but he didn’t need to use words much because I knew what his sounds and mannerisms meant. As lost as I feel without him, he has taught me over 3 decades almost what it’s like to be a bird. RIP Flapper 1986-2022