http://imgur.com/gallery/5Wel8 You decide.
Aawww that's really sweet and super cool at the same time :D. Crows are clever little buggers.
One day, a crow will bring her a mask.
In a follow up interview The little Girl's Parents said they wish she spent more time on school work than playing with crows.
Esp. when her cousin just got a full-ride to college after her science projects received national attention.
Corvids are awesome.
The one time I visited the Tower of London I watched one of the ravens sneak up on a man who was eating a sandwich. Once the man turned around and I swear the raven looked away all nonchalant until he turned back again, concentrating on his sandwich, chatting to his family.
The raven bided its time, waiting for the perfect moment, creeping ever closer. With an almost silent flap of its clipped wings, it hopped onto the back of the man's bench, still undetected. Then in one swift move it made a grab for the sandwich and legged it over the low humans-are-not-allowed-in-here fence with its prize.
It was a beautiful moment, and although I managed to restrain myself so I only laughed a little bit I was cheering that raven on inside. Especially awesome was the "please don't feed the ravens" sign on the fence...
Oh man. Are Ravens the above ground equivalant to Octopods?
Corvidae in general are pretty clever - I've seen footage on telly of a crow sitting on the edge of an open-topped public rubbish bin, leaning ina dn pulling out the black sack with his beak, then having the foresight to stand on the bit he's pulled up so it doesn't fall back in again, and repeating the process till some discarded food comes into reach and he can eat it :D.
Yep, they are awesome at problem-solving. I've seen videos of ravens who can solve chains of puzzles to get a food reward - for example, the food is in a tube and requires a long stick to retrieve. The long stick needs a different stick to retrieve from another tube, and the different stick has to be got from solving another puzzle. And they'll perform tasks for the reward of an appropriate object that looks like it's the right one to get them the food from such a puzzle.
And these are not learned behaviours, the ravens hadn't been previously exposed to these kinds of tests and figured out how to solve them with actual thinking, rather than a scattergun try-everything approach. They try out a couple of sensible things and then get it right. And that's pretty impressive.
They also show Machiavellian behaviours like re-hiding a piece of cached food if they see another raven observing their hiding place. They wait until the other raven has gone away before they do this. Doesn't sound much to humans, but that's very much higher cognition which requires understanding that other birds/people/whatever have different knowledge to you and young children actually can't do that.
And the common magpie is the only non-mammal to pass the mirror test (recognising your own reflection) so far. Again, baby humans don't pass this test.
What about baby Ravens? Can they pass the test?
Haven't seen any research on them, but if my own anecdotal evidence of baby magpies means anything, I'd have to say probably not.
I made a hedgehog feeding station in my garden one summer, using an old guinea pig run propped up so hedgehogs could get underneath to get to the cat food I left there, but foxes and cats couldn't. Every morning I had to rescue a pair of young magpies who were smart enough to spot the food and get in there, but panicked when they couldn't find the exit. No adult birds though, so draw your own conclusions.
Also ravens and magpies can learn to talk really well. That is awesome.
I saw a video of a crow sliding down a roof, flying up to the top and repeating the whole process over again... I was amused and a little bit shocked to be honest. I didn't knew that those birds were THAT intelligent...
...so cool...!
I like this guy who is looking to find a way to integrate crows into a symbiotic relationship with modern man by rewarding them for performing desirable tasks. This is so cool.