"A Murder of Crows"

[Kyzteke]

I just Netflixed this PBS special. It was broadcast afew years ago, but I don’t have cable.

Anyone else seen it? Absolutely fascinating documentary on crows. I always knew they were smart, but it turns out that they are really, REALLY smart.

There are crows in every land mass but Antarctica, they mate for life and one “crop” of babies often hang around for afew years to help raise their siblings.

The New Caledonian crow actually MAKES tools.

And studies have shown that crows can solve a 3 step problem very quickly without ever being taught. They also have amazing facial recognition ability and can remember a person’s face for up to 2 yrs!

That’s better than me, for sure.

If you are interested in nature, I really recommend it. Very cool show.

[dressagetraks]

Never seen the special, but about 2 years ago, I went to a show of raptors, and they had a piebald crow as their opening act. He could work one of those ring puzzles, with the larger to smaller rings on a post, faster than a kid could. Never mixed up his rings or tried to put one on out of order. He also took donations for rescuing raptors at the end. You handed the crow a bill, and he would put it through the slot into the donation box. The raptors were awesome, but he was cute and obviously quite smart.

http://s276.photobucket.com/user/dressagetraks/library/Birds%20of%20Prey%20100811

[Kyzteke]

Yep, they are AMAZINGLY smart. Per the doc, they have the largest brain for their bodyweight of any bird.

They had one experiment where the bird had to pull up a little stick that was dangling from a long string, then use that little stick to fish out a longer stick from a barred cage, THEN use the longer stick to go to another barred box and fish out a piece of meat.

Crow figured it out in like…2 mins or less.

Neat stuff…

[Equibrit]

They are amazing to watch. They run off the hawks around here.

[re-runs]

When I was a child we found a crow with a hurt wing. We caught it and kept it in a corn crib so it could heal or we could at least find out what was wrong with it and keep it fed. When we tried to catch it to examine it better, it got away from us. It just happened to be able to fly good enough to get away at our second attempt to grab it.

We observed another group of crows bringing it food on the ground while it recouperated. They would fly in and drop food in front of it. One would always stay on the ground with it, as to watch/ guard it. We observed this behavior for three weeks. Then we didn`t see it anymore but never found a dead one so it might have made it thanks to its friends and family.

Blue Jays, Ravens, Magpies are of the same family as crows; all very intelligent birds.

A friend sent me this video of a Magpie and a dog. Shows the intelligence level of both bird and dog and their relationship.

Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/qoaEBb4IN4Q
.

[Eventer55]

I have seen in my backyard, crows picking up crackers and stacking them before taking off with them!!! They were amazing. They also will kill and eat rabbits which I wrote about in another thread, very sad, but part of nature.

[Kyzteke]

[QUOTE=re-runs;7283324]

A friend sent me this video of a Magpie and a dog. Shows the intelligence level of both bird and dog and their relationship.

Enjoy.
http://youtu.be/qoaEBb4IN4Q
.[/QUOTE]

Cool!! It’s neat the way the magpie lies down when the dog get too rough, just like a submissive dog would dog. I wonder if that’s intentional?

Now I want a crow…

[Calvincrowe]

You’ll love this video then! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlwxLtFQcrY

I saw the PBS special when it came out. Crows are endlessly fascinating. There is a walnut orchard up the road from us, and watching the crows use the traffic to crack them is amazing. Such cool birds.

[AlmostDun]

One of my relatives live in a neighborhood where the crows have a long held grudge against one group of kids. A few years ago my relative watched the kids throwing rocks at the crows. Since then the crows take every opportunity to mob any of the kids from that particular group.

One day my relative’s little next door neighbor complained that the crows, which had previously ignored her, had attacked her unprovoked on her way to school. Yup, she was walking with some of the rock throwers that day. My relative advised the girl to walk with different kids. Of course, word of his suggestion got back to one of the moms. She was all bent out of shape that an adult was talking trash about her little darling. Too bad for her that crows don’t respond well to soccer moms in denial.

[AlmostDun]

duplicate post.

[threedogpack]

I am at work, and youtube is blocked so this might be a duplicate, but Josh Klein make a coin machine to utilize crows for picking up garbage.

http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html

I did see that PBS show and loved it.

[Foxtrot_s]

Vancouver area is heaven for crows. They commute to Vancouver every day for fine pickins in the garbage and every evening, an hour before dusk so, year round, they fly out to roosts by the thousands. We see them every single night flying over our house, cawing to each other — “This way, this way.” It is quite the phenomenon.

When our baby lambs were born, we heard the baa, baa, and looked up, and
it was a crow mimicking the baby lambs - you could see his beak opening in perfect timing to his ‘bleating’.

[Sooty_Tats]

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlwxLtFQcrY
made the rounds earlier this year (I think it was posted on CNN at one point). Young raven acquired a painful faceful of porcupine quills, at which point it decided to seek out a kindly human being for medical attention. Fortunately the human got video. Mind you, this is a wild bird! Video is amazing, I think - one of the most intelligent animal actions I have ever witnessed.