I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling.
I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band).<p>Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grabbed a handful of pebbles to throw at these poor little creatures.<p>I went out on my upper deck and these crows seemed very upset and were circling in a crazy pattern. I looked around, realizing that something was making them crazy, and they were making me crazy. Then I saw, I am not completely sure if it was a racoon or a badger but it was a small animal of some sort that was edging his way out on the limb of a tree where what appeared to be perhaps the little home of the crows and there babies or eggs or something.<p>So... in my groggy state, I reasoned that if I were to; instead of tossing my pebbles at the crows, I were to toss them at whatever that thing was, then the crows would shut up and let me go back to sleep. I admit, not the most altruistic of motives but, I had a goal.<p>So I tossed my pebbles at this thing (I am an engineer not a biologist so excuse my ignorance) but the little cat like creature scampered off and left the crows little home in the tree next to my house, alone.<p>I am completely fine with having crows as neighbors as long as they do not wake me at pre-dawn hours.<p>The very interesting thing is that since then, it really seems like they have become my little friends. Like little neighbors. OK, I could be a kook, if this had not happened I would think I was a Kook. But when I see them they bob their head. I crow back at them.<p>They were sitting on the ledge of my roof, and I went out on my deck and they scared me and I screamed. Then I waved at them like... OK it is you. Hi.<p>They were leaving some sort of bone fragments on my upper deck like a gift of some sort. I didn't know what to do, so I would pick it up and throw it in the trash. But it kept happening. So I eventually would leave it out there and just waive at them.<p>I have no idea if we are actually communicating but.. they seem highly intelligent to me.
One particularly early, groggy morning I was walking into work and there were a few crows pecking around the grass by the sidewalk. Lost in my thoughts I hear a raspy old man say, "good morning". I look around and don't see anyone, then I look at one of the crows and it looks me right in the eye and repeats, "good morning". I doubted my sanity for a few days before confiding in my wife what happened and was surprised and very much relieved when I learned crows could talk.
I didn't read the article or have anything to add, I just wanted to share this.
My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before.<p>We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined up on the power lines waiting for their free meal.<p>But it gets better. One of my kids loves watching the birds, so we go out there and do so a lot. Sometimes we throw them some crackers etc. for free entertainment.<p>We were outside one day and someone walked by pretty close to us. They didn't pose any (recognizable) threat, but apparently the crows thought we were in some sort of danger because several swooped down and attacked the person walking by. They were totally fine after the crow mauling, but I did read that crows do view people as friend and foe, depending on what they might be trying to protect.
Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question:<p>I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they <i>can't</i> do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks.<p>If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids, octopi, macaques or dolphins a task that requires building towers of abstraction in their own mind, and then gives them harder and harder "levels"? I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game?<p>Say, we could build a four key keyboard that they can use, then teach them Sokoban, starting with extremely simple levels (walk up once to get a snack; walk up twice to get a snack; walk left twice; walk up twice, then down twice; walk up, then back down and right to get beneath the second crate, then up again...) and progressing towards actual Sokoban levels humans find interesting...<p>If they possess general intelligence this system could tell us a lot more about its limits than a series of experiments that each requires building a physical apparatus and spending a bunch of time perfecting it and then teaching it to the animals from zero?<p>Did I miss the answer when googling?<p>Is it that it's common knowledge among researchers that no animal possesses anywhere near enough intelligence to learn Sokoban (or 2048, or any non-real-time puzzle game with simple discrete controls, but I'm pretty sure Sokoban is a near optimal choice) so nobody even tries, nor bothers publishing it (or it's written in the basic textbooks that I didn't bother looking through)?<p>Do researchers in the field lack access to a technologist that could help them build something like Sokoban For Crows?<p>Or is it something else that I don't know I don't know?
The headline of the article, as is often the case, overstates what the actual research shows. Here is the actual claim made in the abstract of the paper:<p>"We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness."<p>In other words: when crows who are trained to look for something show behavioral evidence that they see what they are looking for, the researchers can correlate that with neuron firings in their brains. Which, compared to the overblown claim of "higher intelligence", equates to "whoop de freaking do".
Crows on HN, for the curious to see also:<p>2020 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598939" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598939</a><p>2019 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575</a><p>2017 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368</a><p>2015 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789631" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789631</a><p>2014 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086105" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086105</a><p>2009 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840</a><p>Pretty sure there have been other good threads too...
You can tell how much smarter crows are just by going to feed the ducks.<p>The crows watch YOU and your arm, predict where you'll throw and move there in advance, often catching things in mid-air. It's not just reaction speed, they're watching really carefully and making guesses. The ducks are next on the spectrum, they spot it first (after it lands) and geese are the dumbest, the feed can hit them right in the head, and even once they realise what's happening some other duck will usually get there and eat it before they do.
I’ve mentioned this previously but it’s on topic and still amazes me, so I’ll just copy & paste:<p>I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting.
The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.
I’ve always thought this was confirmed with the video of one snowboarding down a roof.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo</a>
I've wondered about the difference in behavior of crows when they encounter humans at different kinds of places.<p>I put peanuts out on the rail of my deck for the squirrels (I've got Eastern grey squirrels and Douglas squirrels) and the Steller's jays. If I see crows around, I'll give them some too.<p>If I'm actually outside on the deck, even far away from where the peanuts are, the crows will not come get them. They wait for me to go in, then get the peanuts, then fly to a nearby tree to wait for me to come put out more peanuts.<p>I have never been aggressive in any way to the crows, and will toss peanuts to near the foot of the tree they are sitting in. They have also seen me giving peanuts to squirrels. The Eastern greys will run up to near me, and the Douglas' would take them right out of my hand if I let them, so the crows have plenty of evidence I'm happy to give away peanuts. But they will not get close.<p>Yet at nearby supermarkets and fast food places, they will walk around the parking lot looking for food and come right near people. They seem completely indifferent to people there, only reacting if someone happens to be walking or driving right toward them, then they casually move to the side.<p>They don't seem worried at all about the humans at those places. So why are they much more cautious about me at my house?<p>I wonder if they recognize houses are human nests, and so we might be a lot more touchy about other animals in the area, and so the crows are much more cautious than when they encounter us at the supermarket?
After moving to Portland I've become enamored with our local corvids. Lots of Crows, Scrub Jays, Steller Jays. I toss them peanuts and they peek in the window looking for me.<p>Its fun to compare how cautious and skittish a murder of crows is compared to a mating pair of Scrub Jays. The little blue birds will swoop right in, feed a foot away from me, out of my hand, occasionally they've even hopped in the front door.<p>Meanwhile the crows will miss out on lots of tasty peanuts just watching the smaller birds show off their bravery and acrobatics.<p>That said: there are a lot more crows than scrub jays. The caution pays off.<p>They're fascinating to watch, the signs of intelligence are so clear, but at the same time they feel alien. They are very much not like us.
I have been repeatedly impressed at how clever crows, ravens, and certain parrots are whenever we figure out how to test them. I've seen videos of Cockatoos figuring out multi-step puzzles, and IIRC, ravens have been able to figure out puzzles with 5+ steps.<p>I'm not even sure if <i>I</i> can solve a puzzle with 5+ steps :)
One thing that is remarkable about crows is that they are most likely more intelligent than primates, despite having a much smaller brain. It looks like they evolved high intelligence separately, using different brain circuitry from ours.
The capability attributed to crows is that they think about (analyse) their own thinking.<p>The article arrives at that conclusion using two methods: 1. Behavioural analysis. 2. Reverse engineering neural circuitry.<p>Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? The article tells us that the trait isn't unique to humans, because crows have it too.
I do not understand why this is about consciousness. My take of this study is that they establish that there are two type of neurons: (i) those recording whether there is a signal ("neurons signalling stimulus intensity" (ii) those recording how to react on the signal based on a rule ("representing the crows' percept").<p>This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness?
They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.
I've had some magpie issues for years, and after trying various things I ended up shooting a couple because they were getting aggressive. It worked and the rest buggered off.<p>During the entire time a local couple of ravens watched the entire process from afar. Theyv'e never been an issue so I haven't paid attention to them, but to this day, I swear that those two ravens come by with every chick they hatch, watching when I practice shoot teaching their kids to stay away from me if I have my rifle. Otherwise, they mostly ignore me.
If you have an interest in these truly fascinating animals, there is an interesting and well-written blog at <a href="https://corvidresearch.blog/#content" rel="nofollow">https://corvidresearch.blog/#content</a>
> a clueless hedgehog across a highway before it becomes roadkill<p>Before watching the linked video I thought this was describing crows deliberately placing hedgehogs in harm'ss way so that they could eat the resulting roadkill
Researchers Find Crows Smart Enough Not To Let On How Smart They Really Are: <a href="https://www.theonion.com/researchers-find-crows-smart-enough-not-to-let-on-how-s-1844081510" rel="nofollow">https://www.theonion.com/researchers-find-crows-smart-enough...</a>
Various levels of TL;DR:<p>Article:<p>> Now the birds can add one more feather to their brainiac claims: Research unveiled on Thursday in Science finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals.<p>Science mag:<p>> Humans have tended to believe that we are the only species to possess certain traits, behaviors, or abilities, especially with regard to cognition. Occasionally, we extend such traits to primates or other mammals—species with which we share fundamental brain similarities. Over time, more and more of these supposed pillars of human exceptionalism have fallen. Nieder et al. now argue that the relationship between consciousness and a standard cerebral cortex is another fallen pillar (see the Perspective by Herculano-Houzel). Specifically, carrion crows show a neuronal response in the palliative end brain during the performance of a task that correlates with their perception of a stimulus. Such activity might be a broad marker for consciousness.<p>Abstract of the paper:<p>> Subjective experiences that can be consciously accessed and reported are associated with the cerebral cortex. Whether sensory consciousness can also arise from differently organized brains that lack a layered cerebral cortex, such as the bird brain, remains unknown. We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness. Neuronal activity follows a temporal two-stage process in which the first activity component mainly reflects physical stimulus intensity, whereas the later component predicts the crows’ perceptual reports. These results suggest that the neural foundations that allow sensory consciousness arose either before the emergence of mammals or independently in at least the avian lineage and do not necessarily require a cerebral cortex.
I feel that the title oversells this a bit.<p>This research demonstrates that crows know whether they saw something or not. It doesn't demonstrate that they are on a par with humans when it comes to introspection.
The intelligence of crows takes part in many folk tales in India. Even the venerable kids mag "Tinkle" picked up on this in the "Kalia the crow" series.<p>Crows are also fed by staunch Hindus in the belief that they represent the souls of their ancestors. The crows catch on this behaviour and pretty soon start asking for food at the right place and at the right time to the right person.
Just a couple of weeks ago, northern summer, I saw two pairs of crows near the peak of a rooftop about forty feet apart. One of the birds had a round plastic lid in its beak and appeared to be trying to get the attention of the other, picking up the lid and setting it down, while the other pair looked on from a distance. When the second crow (equivalent of a teenager in my mind, because it had the body language of someone trying to figure out what to do with their hands) stopped acting distracted, the first crow set down the lid and stood on it, slightly lifting its wings. This happened a couple of times, and then the first crow flew away. While the two apart watched, the second "teenage" crow picked up the lid, set it down, and then stood on it like the first.
I'm looking forward to snow this year.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/3dWw9GLcOeA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/3dWw9GLcOeA</a>
>“Besides crows, this kind of neurobiological evidence for sensory consciousness only exists in humans and macaque monkeys.”<p>Well, the fact that animals can remember things for more than a second or two is pretty good evidence that they have this kind of sensory consciousness. The ability to say you saw something and the ability to act on having seen something seem to be intimately tied together in every case we can probe. We only seem to be influenced by subliminal stimuli for a second or two, for instance. And there are people whose vision systems are cut off from their consciousness, they can pick up objects in front of them but not say that there's an object in front of them. A normal person can close their eyes then remember where an object was and pick it up. They can't.<p>So you would tend to expect this in any animal capable of remembering things.
Two observations where I thought that crows are really quite smart (both related to adapting to city life):<p>(1) Crows picking up chestnuts from under trees, and throwing them on the road under traffic lights. Traffic light goes green, cars drive over chestnuts munching them into a yummy (for crows I guess) little porridge blobs. Wait till traffic light goes red and enjoy the meal.<p>(2) I was wondering why some areas near trashcans are so extremely littered and thought "pfft humans", until I watched teams of two or three crows making that mess: one jumps into the trashcan and throws out everything it finds in there, the other team mates sort through the trash to pick out the goodies.<p>Also crows ganging up on kestrels is very interesting to watch. The crows are employing deception and ambush tactics (although kestrels aren't dumb either).
This video is a startling verification.of the crows mental capabilities.<p>“Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow”<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04</a>
This is fascinating - similar to octopuses. But I am not sure if its arrogant of our species to assess intelligence in this way (absolutely no disrespect to these great scientists BTW) : surely there must be a better way; and perhaps our notion of "intelligence" / "consciousness" is primitive and our current assessment is backwards?<p>Also, if we were to make contact with an alien civilization, hopefully we have something better than "let's see how they open this tightly closed jar underwater?" or "flash them a few red/green cards and see what happens".
I wonder could you breed crows like you do dogs or livestock by selecting for the largest brain in each generation? At least physiological changes seem to be pretty profound but maybe the brain is harder to coax to grow.
Just yesterday I was out by the beach, seated on a bench and observed a crow darting around by the seawall as pedestrians passed by.<p>It was finding some scraps to nibble on, but it kept getting closer and closer to me giving little glances.<p>Finally when it was just a bit over arm's length I looked it in the eye and said, firmly, "No, I don't have anything for you."<p>SURPRISED SQUAWK and flight to the wall. I was like, "Hey, it's okay." Still upset by being around this human, it buzzed by the next pedestrians to get away, making them remark on the "aggressive birds".
I love crows, their simply amazing. I have always befriended the local crows every time I move. Feeding them primarily. But the most amazing experience I have had with crows is. About 6 years ago I was walking behind the Albertsons next to my apartment. I quickly notice two younger crows watching me and flying ahead to where I was eventually going to be walking. So I'm walking along when I see 2 heads peek over the edge of the roof about 50 feet a head of me. I kept walking when all of a sudden this thing falls directly in front of me. It literally barely missed the pill of my hat. When I look down to see what it was I was shocked. It was a nail an old rusty nail. I've been seeing there this nail has been on this roof probably since the roof was put on. it had rust stuck and sticking off of the sides of it. I looked up and saw what could really only be described as a couple of a teenagers pulling a prank on somebody walking by. Here's where it gets crazy. Directly ahead of me at the end of the alley that was behind the Albertsons comes this older Crow. It flew straight at these two younger ones making a loud racket as if it was an adult young at a couple of kids because they just saw them pull this prank. I gave a little chuckle to myself as it kept walking. By the time I got around to the front of the store the crew that basically yelled at the younger ones flies twords me. Now I'm walking down the middle part of the driveway in front of the store so I've got parking to my left business to my right and customers going in and out of the business because it's right around 11:00 in the morning. The crow then flies just about arms reach away from me. It then what's up this light gentle little sound followed by my only guess is an apology. I smiled at the crow how did my head said it's all right. That's what I realized that about eight maybe nine people that were around us going in and out of the store are just standing there staring at me and this Crow as I walk alon. Crowbthen flies away and I get about another 10 ft before three different people go *what was that???" I didn't know what to say so I said sorry but that was a private conversation and kept on walking. Crow are so much smarter than we give them credit for. Remember crows are the only animals in the world that are watching us studying us and anticipating our actions. There's simply amazing birds. Thanks
Out here, the ravens are our neighborhood watch. They have certain blocks that they patrol, always one spotter (from a tree or building), and one on the wing or walking about.<p>Ravens are about the size as a 4 year old human. They love McDonald's french fries, alas: they will sort through the refuse bins, and aren't too careful about putting the trash back.<p>I often wonder about encouraging them to pick up litter and recycling. I am sure they could handle the job. There's at least one instance documented of getting corvids to pick up trash...
I'm still baffled about the concept of consciousness still being used in the sciences.<p>It's such an ill defined concept that makes me think that one of three possibilities exist:<p>- consciousness is the wrong concept<p>- anything that has some degree of self-reference is conscious.<p>- there is no consciousness, just computation.<p>I'm erring on the side of it being just plain wrong or uninteresting.<p>I don't believe that there's anything supernatural about it, it must be a result of computation, but for some reason we ascribe a special status to it.
I highly recommend this PBS special largely dealing with the intelligence of crows: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-introduction/5838/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-introducti...</a><p>They might have had some other specials too, but in one they show them completing complicated multi-step challenges using tools to get food.
<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/feeding-crows-death-ritual-shradh" rel="nofollow">https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/feeding-crows-death-ritua...</a><p>From the atlas obscure article:
> Hindus believe that crows are the link between the worlds of the living and the dead; ancestors, it is said, visit the living in the form of a crow.
Crows pass the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test</a> . This alone is quite impressive.
Just this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uXiAe7Oc-I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uXiAe7Oc-I</a> if someone in doubts.
Obligatory mention of 'SILVERSPOT, The Story of a Crow ' from 'Wild Animals I Have Known'<p><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3031/3031-h/3031-h.htm#link2H_4_0002" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3031/3031-h/3031-h.htm#link2...</a>
> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals.<p>I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher intelligence? As far as I can tell, it's because there's no simple test that could be applied to confirm or deny whether higher intelligence exists within an animal, so we then jump to the conclusion "Because I can't prove that they do have higher intelligence, then they must not have higher intelligence" - logic doesn't work that way! Glad to see some people are willing to dig a little deeper and take the time to show that crows do have this capability.