You all know that I love crows, so when I saw this article I couldn't help posting it straight away:
Crows' reasoning ability rivals that of seven-year-old humans
New Caledonian crows are as good at reasoning as a human seven-year-old, claim researchers.
The scientists subjected six wild crows to a battery of tests designed to challenge their understanding of causal relationships. The "water displacement" tasks were all variations of an Aesop's fable in which a thirsty crow drops stones to raise the level of water in a pitcher.
In the study, crows worked out how to obtain floating food rewards by dropping heavy objects into water-filled tubes.
They demonstrated an ability to choose objects that would sink rather than float, and solid rather than hollow objects, and they were able to choose a high water level tube over one with a low water level, and a water-filled tube over one filled with sand. The Guardian
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| Photograph: Sarah Jelbert/PLOS ONE |
New Caledonian crows, named after the Pacific islands where they live, are famous for their intelligence and inventiveness. They are the only non-primate species known to fashion tools, such as sticks and hooks which they use to winkle out grubs from logs and branches.
The findings appear in the latest issue of the online journal PLOS ONE. The Guardian
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| Red-billed Chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) in Monegros. Photograph: E.G. |
Fascinating birds...
