Which is the most intelligent bird?
The corvids (ravens, crows, jays, magpies, etc.) and psittacines (parrots, macaws, and cockatoos) are often considered the most intelligent birds. In my opinion crows are even smarter than psittacines. There are several incidents which prove the remarkable intelligence of crows. Here are some.
1. Sense of counting: Crows can count numbers which is rare in avians. There’s a story from many 18th century which has been referred in many recent books. Back in the days one farmer was being a troubled by a crow. The crow was marauding his crops severely. Whenever he tried to bring gun out into the field, the crow used to go out of range. Frustrated farmer, hired two hunters and asked them to hide in a small hut in the field. The farmer tried to trick the hunter, by sending out only one hunter. But crow wasn’t fooled by that and stayed out of range. But as soon as the second hunter left the hut, the crow used return to the field and ravage the crop. The farmer tried the same trick with three hunters but it didn’t fall for that. The crow returned only after all three hunters left. The crow outsmarted the farmer with four hunters also. Finally, when the farmer hired five hunters, the crow waited till four hunters left but came in range of the fifth hunter’s gun who shot it down. This was a proof that the crows were able to count. Some ornithologists have claimed that some crows were able to count till 7.
2. Bait fishing by crows in Israel: The wild hooded crows in Israel have learned to use bread for bait-fishing. The crow used bring a bread piece into the water and shred them into crumbs. When the fishes come out to eat the bread crumbs, the crow catches the fish using its bill. In other words, the crow was trying to maximize its food profits by giving up bread piece and getting a fish as a return on investment. Here are some of the photos of that.
3. Perception of danger and human face recognition: Crows are social species, whenever a crow is dead, a flock of crows gather around it which appears to us as some of sort crow crime investigation. They are infact examining, not the crow, but the environment around it. The flock try to analyse what happened to that dead crow. They look for any sort of danger that could have caused the death. Suppose a human is there near the dead crow, then they register his/her face in their memory permanently. They consider that human to be dangerous, sometimes they tend to get away from him and sometimes they tend to get aggressive and attack him. There’s one such case in India where crow thinks one man named Shiva Kewat as guilty for the death of a chick. Kewat found a crow chick found stuck in a net near his home. When he tried to save it, the chick died in his hands and he couldn’t do anything to revive it. Turns out, crows not only have a strong memory but also their facial recognition powers are on point. Ever since the incident, the families of crows in the neighborhood have been targetting Kewat by attacking him. They refuse to acknowledge or understand that he wasn’t really at fault and continue to hold him responsible. They attack his head like by nose diving like fighter jets which has caused several injuries and left several scars on his head and face.
4. Self-recognition in mirror: Self-recognition in mirror was thought to be limited to higher cognition species like humans, great apes, elephants and dolphins. But the magpies which are a part of crow family and have different structure then the previously mentioned species were able to recognize their bodies in the mirror. There are scientific experimental proof for this. Psychologists have conducted mark test on magpies, wherein a mark will be placed on the magpie’s body in such a way that it can only be seen in mirror. The feel of the sticker on their throats did not seem to alarm the magpies. However, when the birds with colored stickers glimpsed themselves in the mirror, they scratched at their throats — a clear indication that they recognized the image in the mirror as their own. Those that received a black sticker, invisible against the black neck feathers, did not react.
5. Usage of tools: A team of scientists have revealed that New Caledonian crows are able to create tools by combining two or more otherwise non-functional elements, an ability so far observed only in humans and great apes. These crows were able to create long-reach tools by combining small parts. These crows possess highly flexible abilities that allow them to solve complex problems involving anticipation of the properties of objects they have never seen even without receiving any sort of training. In the case of humans, children take several years to create these kind of novel tools.
These are some of the several evidences that show crows are the super-smart species of the avian family.
References:
Birds’ Mind: Bait-Fishing Crows
Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition
