Intelligence in Crows, Ravens and Jays

September 12, 2005 9:52 AM

Are scrub jays and ravens as smart as chimpanzees? Studies by Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton suggest that crows, ravens, jays and other members of Corvidae may be chimpanzees mental equals. Evidence suggesting this includes tool making, the ability to use memories of past experiences and plan for the future, and relatively large brains.
posted by itchylick (50 comments total)

Yeah, but I want a monkey. I don't want no stupid bird. Can a bird dress up in a bow tie and ride a unicycle? No.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 9:57 AM on September 12, 2005

The video where the crow bends the wire to create a hook is surprising. It doesn't seem like that sort of behavior can be innate or coded by evolution.
posted by mert at 10:01 AM on September 12, 2005

When I lived in Japan, it seemed that Tokyo had crows the way NYC has pigeons. Let me tell you, those birds are scary smart. They used to steal clothes hangers from our balcony to build nests, and they'd sometimes stalk my wife, waiting for her to turn her attention away for a moment, just to steal groceries from the basket on her bike.
But the snow monkeys in northern Japan are smarter, stronger and more aggressive than the crows. I've seen videos where they atack a woman in a supermarket parking lot, pull her pants down, and then make off with her groceries. Scary for the woman, but hilarious for everyone else.
posted by bashos_frog at 10:03 AM on September 12, 2005

Apparently some humans show a monkey-like intelligence, as well. One of my coworkers, for example, throws poop when he feels threatened.
posted by chasing at 10:09 AM on September 12, 2005

I think it is vital - for research purposes - that these videos appear here on the blue as soon as possible, bashos.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:10 AM on September 12, 2005

bashos_frog - You need to find those videos, pronto!
posted by Witty at 10:11 AM on September 12, 2005

Cripes!
posted by Witty at 10:11 AM on September 12, 2005

I'm looking, I'm looking...
posted by bashos_frog at 10:13 AM on September 12, 2005

To read more about the fascinating, clever, and yes - intelligent raven, read Ravens in Winter, by Berndt Heinrich. He's written other books as well, some about ravens (Mind of a raven), some about insects (Bumblebee Economics), but Raven in Winter is a huge favorite of mine.
He is a scientist first and foremost, so he is meticulous in his observations and presentation of evidence/facts. I thought I had a website address for him, but cannot find it, and my Google-fu fails me today.
Ravens are great - we have a pair that shows up every fall/winter near our neighborhood, and we even got them to feed at our house (in an urban environment!) for a bit last winter. There are some ornithologists who believe that the raven, once chased out of urban areas by the (seemingly) more adaptive crow, may be urbanizing - if so, watch the crow numbers shrink!
posted by dbmcd at 10:16 AM on September 12, 2005

We have no idea how smart different animals are, and especially how smart relative to each other. That's because we are only now beginning to realize that our assumptions about what would or would not qualify as animal smarts was colored by our own chauvinist perspective.

Even the Betty the Crow bombshell only happened accidentally, and prior to that it was established "fact" that while some primates could make tools, birds were not smart enough to do so. Now we know that that was wrong, but we don't know how many of our other "facts" about animal behavior are limited, or even tainted, in a similar way.
posted by soyjoy at 10:17 AM on September 12, 2005

Of course. As most people know, Jeremy The Crow from The Secret Of NIMH was originally Clint Eastwood's partner in "Every Which Way But Loose," but Jeremy kept arguing for more backend points. So, you get Clyde.

Of course, Jeremy got the last laugh when he became friends with comic creator James O'Barr, and over a number of drinks convinced him that his upcoming revenge-fueled loner series "The Bonobo" would be taken more seriously if he went a more avian route with it.

So, now you know... the rest of the story.
posted by tittergrrl at 10:22 AM on September 12, 2005

When I was working as a park ranger I used to give a campfire talk on ravens - those birds are crazy smart. Anecdotes abound:

Their brain-to-body ratio (size of one vs. the other) equals that of dolphins, almost equals our own. They'll tell each other where food is, and if it's something they can't get at themselves, like a carcass with frozen skin, they'll get another animal, like a wolf, that can open it up for them. Then, when everyone's done eating, play games like tag or dive-bomb-the-wolf.

They can count to at least ten, some say twenty, and out-perform graduate students in tests of memory. They've figured out how to work the Velcro flaps on snomobiles in Yellowstone to get the food that riders store inside.

Some say only humans make a bigger variety of sounds. Different raven communities have distinct dialects. Sometimes they seem to know what they’re saying: one raven owner always fed his raven while saying the German word for “food.” The raven then started saying this word when feeding another captive raven.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:22 AM on September 12, 2005

How vocal are ravens? Are they like parots, able to say anything? hmm...
posted by delmoi at 10:27 AM on September 12, 2005

I just finished reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. She describes some birds as having extremely high intelligence, and gives more corroborating details..
posted by tdismukes at 10:29 AM on September 12, 2005

delmoi, there's at least one word that ravens have been known to say...
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:34 AM on September 12, 2005

Previous bird tool use discussed here and here for those interested.
posted by longbaugh at 10:36 AM on September 12, 2005

I remember seeing this hilarious video of ravens playing in the snow. They would fly up to the top of the slope, tuck in their wings, and roll down, then do it all over again. Like children. Uncanny.
posted by Hobbacocka at 10:37 AM on September 12, 2005

An article about certain crow in Japan using cars to break open walnuts.
posted by bshort at 10:50 AM on September 12, 2005

They can (...) out-perform graduate students in tests of memory.

Having been a graduate student myself, this impresses me far less than bending the wire to make a hook.
posted by cleardawn at 10:59 AM on September 12, 2005

I read that as "ravers" and it still made sense.
posted by dickasso at 11:09 AM on September 12, 2005

Ditto, dbmcd, any of the raven books by Bernd Heinrich (not Berndt) are excellent. Ravens are so cool. Saturday morning we saw one dropping walnuts on the road on the road just down the street from us. We tried to run over it for her, but missed. :-)
posted by DakotaPaul at 11:11 AM on September 12, 2005

Damn. Can't seem to find it. Any mefites with kanji-enabled google-fu? It was something I saw on FujiTV. I remember a period when they were showing monkey attack videos every noght for like a week. Probably coincided with this.
posted by bashos_frog at 11:11 AM on September 12, 2005

They would fly up to the top of the slope, tuck in their wings, and roll down, then do it all over again. Like children. Uncanny.

The corvidae are tricksters, too. I've once saw a Steller's Jay sneak up on some crows perched in a tree in a greenbelt on Queen Anne hill here in Seattle and then suddenly break out with a pitch perfect Caw! Caw! Caw! crow distress call. The startled crows shot out of the tree in every direction. The jay then followed with the signature Steller's Jay wacka-wacka-wacka! call, which sounds not unlike the noise little boys make in imitation of machine guns. That time it was easy to hear it as laughter.
posted by y2karl at 11:18 AM on September 12, 2005

... and especially how smart relative to each other ...

I initially read this as "... and especially how smart our relatives are", and was all set to concur.

As for Crows v. Ravens, I thought I remembered reading several things that suggested that crows were actually quite a bit smarter, especially in problem-solving tasks.

Now, as for "intelligence"-- who here is willing to say they actually know what it is? Certainly the researchers have an idea about certain kinds of intelligence, and they're able to show that some corvids exceed chimps (or grad students) on certain metrics. But what does that really tell us? As we walk around using the term, we don't really take great pains to know what it actually means.
posted by lodurr at 11:23 AM on September 12, 2005

A lot of birds can be taught to speak if they are caught early and hand reared. I have seen this in action and it's incredibly disturbing to see a non-exotic bird "talk."
posted by fire&wings at 11:24 AM on September 12, 2005

Geez, y2karl, wasn't that pushing his luck? I've heard lots of stories about crows holding grudges and getting even. (Not kidding, actually.) And I've personally witnessed them tag-teaming hawks here around town.

If I were a Stellar's Jay, I wouldn't be messing with crows.
posted by lodurr at 11:25 AM on September 12, 2005

How vocal are ravens? Are they like parots, able to say anything? hmm...

Yes, ravens and crows can talk, although I am under the impression that they don't speak nearly as readily as parrots. Some do, some don't.

They were a somewhat common wild animal pet up until the 1970's when they were added to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and keeping them was banned. (Unfortunately, you can still hunt them and you can kill them without any kind of license as long as you deem them a threat to things like crops.)

I remember reading a great book as a kid growing up called "Crows as Pets" that inspired me then, and to this day, to want one as a pet. If you raised one from a baby, you could let it go but it would supposedly stay around as your wild buddy forever, following you to school, work, the store, and reeking havoc the whole way. A friend of mine's dad had one in the early 70's, and confirmed everything I had heard / read about them.

Even though you can't own an american crow or an american raven (well, if you're a canuck, you can keep crows, just not ravens. Go Canada!) you can get african pied crows as pets, though they are about as pricey as parrots and harder to find.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:25 AM on September 12, 2005

Yes, yes, crows are smart, blah blah blah PLEEAASE I want to see the depantsing of the Japanese lady now!
posted by Turtles all the way down at 11:35 AM on September 12, 2005

I saw some show on the Discovery Channel or public tv about animal intelligence and play. There was a woman who was a corvid expert and I think rehabilitator, and she had one who would fly along with her in her convertible car, hovering as she drove. This was how she gave it exercise. It was very cool to watch.
posted by beth at 11:41 AM on September 12, 2005

"Increasingly, scientists agree that it isn't physical need that makes animal[s] smart, but social necessity. Group living tends to be a complicated business, so for individuals to prosper they need to understand exactly what's going on. So highly social creatures like dolphins, chimps, and humans tend to be large-brained and intelligent."

This is one of those bizarre statements of causality that undermines the persuasiveness of evolutionary reasoning. The implication here is that — for reasons unknown — a bunch of vertebrates find themselves living in social groups, and so in response to evolutionary imperative must now develop bigger brains or... what?… not get invited to the better parties, I suppose.

Uh… how about we say instead that organisms that develop bigger brains become capable of forming social groups, which has pretty clear advantages in the big, wild world, and therefore gives them greater chances of surviving and reproducing. It all fits within the paradigm, and blows away the nasty whiff of Lamarckism that's always hanging about on the edge of Darwinism.
posted by guidonDeBascogne at 11:45 AM on September 12, 2005

Those New Caledonian crows are almost scary-smart. I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by Alex Kacelnik, where he showed us the videos of the bird making the hook and several others. For example, they use feathers to make tools, little brushes, that they use to sweep insects into their cage for snacks. (At one point they were housed with normal English crows to see if they could learn from the New Caledonian variety. Not only did the English crows learn nothing, but they were constantly harassed by the smarter NC variety: They would pluck feathers off of the English crows to make more tools.)

One of the funniest videos he showed us - one that usually doesn't get much play - is a male crow working to make a hook to snare some food, failing to catch the food, and then giving up, before a female makes a new hook and retrieves the food. He said this video often prompts audience members to ask about male vs. female intelligence. Then he showed us the rest of the video - the part that is usually left off, where the male swoops in and steals the female's food. Make up your own mind which bird is smarter.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:50 AM on September 12, 2005

I love the hook-bending video and mention it every chance I get. Even when someone uses a fork around me. I did think it was a solution that was a variation on a nest-building technique.
Well let me cut to the chase. I want a crow and I want a monkey, imagine what the two together could achieve.
posted by kingfisher, his musclebound cat at 11:51 AM on September 12, 2005

Wire bending? Is that like spoon bending? (Kidding)

Crows are badass! There are tons of them in the Puget Sound area, and the ones living on the shore mimic the seagulls by dropping shellfish from the air to break them apart. Once I was walking through a parking lot, and I noticed a crow on the hood of someone's car whacking the windshield with a clam or muscle in its beak. It noticed me and stopped for a brief moment. When it realized I was just passing-by, it resumed smacking the shellfish on that windshield.
posted by augustweed at 11:55 AM on September 12, 2005

guidonDeBascogne writes "It all fits within the paradigm, and blows away the nasty whiff of Lamarckism that's always hanging about on the edge of Darwinism."

Invalid statement. Check your facts. You don't develop a bigger brain for no reason and then suddenly discover that it's good at working out social behavior, especially given that the increase in brain size is in the regions important for such behavior and not brain size in general.

In a changing bunch (like a herd for example), the only cooperative behavior is generally defense, which usually falls under the "selfish herd" variety of "hide in this group to decrease my own chance of becoming lunch". This does not require a big brain: Herd animals are, for the most part, pretty much dumb.

In long-lived animals that forage or hunt as a stable group, inter-individual cooperation is much more important. Managing yourself in such a group, long-term, requires you to be good at remembering who is helping you out, and who is screwing you over. You also need to be better at recognizing group vs. non-group. Animals that are better at recognizing and remembering group members and how they have interacted with them in the past will fare better in a social group with cooperative behavior. Recognition of members and remembering past interactions is easier if you have more neurons to perform the work. More social interactions, more brain cells. Those with more brain cells naturally will end up doing better in the long run and generating more offspring. No Lamarckism necessary.

There's a very nice book written by E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology, been around for over 25 years now, does a great job of explaining the evolution of such group behaviors and goes a long way towards the idea of discussing how evolution has been driving bigger brain development in highly social animals.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:03 PM on September 12, 2005

One of my coworkers, for example, throws poop when he feels threatened.

So how IS working in Washington DC - to be a cog in the government machine?
posted by rough ashlar at 12:27 PM on September 12, 2005

I doubt the vice-president is just a cog.
posted by bashos_frog at 12:33 PM on September 12, 2005

how about we say instead that organisms that develop bigger brains become capable of forming social groups, which has pretty clear advantages in the big, wild world, and therefore gives them greater chances of surviving and reproducing.

Just reminded me that the crows in our southern california suburb appear to make up approximately four generations of an extended family, and that one of the nicest things to witness just as the sun goes down in certain seasons is to hear the piercing cry of one crow that calls all the others home to -- well, we assume to feed, but it's really hard to say. Suffice to say crows fly from all directions to the sound of that cry, and it's almost as regular as clockwork.

Oh, and my first clue about smart crows came from watching one in a parking lot of a fast-food joint. The crow landed next to a bag full of food remnants, went inside the bag, pulled out each of the items separately on the ground, and only then went through each item (bad, fry box, whatever) looking for food. When a car came near, the crow would watch, and if it looked like it was heading towards the food pile, the crow would lazily fly up to a nearly gutter, watch the car go by, then fly back down to continue the sorting/searching.

Also, there are few things as enjoyable in nature as watching a crow repeatedly dive-bomb a squirrel for what looks like fun.
posted by davejay at 12:48 PM on September 12, 2005

I remember a period when they were showing monkey attack videos every [night] for like a week.

That's it. I'm getting Japanese television somehow.
posted by sveskemus at 12:49 PM on September 12, 2005

live frogs: You're reading my mind. I think we'll find that what evolves and gets recognized as "intelligence" is a high capacity for modeling the behavior of others. We need to do that in order to make our fellows more predictable. As a very beneficial side effect, that ability to model the behavior of others also radically improves problem solving and scenario creation capabilities.

One thing that would be really interesting, as we improve our capacity to research these things, is to figure out whether this modeling is done in different ways in widely divergent families (e.g. dolphins, corvids, apes).

I used to have concerns similar to those of guidonDeBascone -- it seemed to me odd to say that social living required a big brain. I think it's because I wasn't very good at social living, and I perceived it as a challenge to my intellect to say that social living required intelligence.
posted by lodurr at 1:45 PM on September 12, 2005

caution live frogs: Your third paragraph (which I think is a good sound application of good sound evolutionary theory) essentially supports my point. If big brains developed 'because' of the requirements of interacting in large groups, then the planet would be ruled by wildebeests. It's not the principle I'm objecting to, it's the sneaky temptation to attribute causality rather than simple selection to environmental factors, which is an attribute of Lamarckian theory.

And naturally I would check my facts, except that the moment we leave a discussion of the correlation between brain development and social organization and try to explain why that correlation exists, we've entered the world of theory.

You don't develop a bigger brain for no reason and then suddenly discover that it's good at working out social behavior...

Subsitute "some reason" for "no reason", strike the "don't" and "suddenly", and append "which confers an advantage over other species, groups, individuals", and you've pretty much delivered the 10¢ tour of the core of precisely that theory.

I think we might be derailing, though. Please rebut if you feel like it, but I'm going to gracefully bow out of a thread that's about something pretty wonderful, no matter how you explain it.
posted by guidonDeBascogne at 2:05 PM on September 12, 2005

The only experience I had with crow intelligence kind of blew me away. Long story short, found a white crow...blah blah blah...it ended up in the top branches of an oak tree. Many other crows threatened it and tried to attack it. One crow stood up for it, broke off a twig with leaves on it from the tree, and defended itself from the other crows using this twig/leaf thing. (Shook it at them, used it to block blows from the other crows' beaks, etc.) It was fascinating and scary to watch. And sad for the white crow.
posted by jeanmari at 2:18 PM on September 12, 2005

Just reminded me that the crows in our southern california suburb appear to make up approximately four generations of an extended family,

That's a coomon trait among corvidae: they hang out in family groups.
I recall an article in the paper last year sometime saying that researchers were studying group re-formation in the wake of West Nile Virus, to which crows and jays are very susceptible. They found that new crow family groups formed between related "cousins."
posted by me3dia at 3:05 PM on September 12, 2005

Ravens. The Bird In Black. from PBS, also includes the video beth mentioned, which I couldn't get to play (RealPlayer).
posted by DakotaPaul at 3:33 PM on September 12, 2005

I remember seeing this hilarious video of ravens playing in the snow. They would fly up to the top of the slope, tuck in their wings, and roll down, then do it all over again. Like children. Uncanny.

My mother watched a bird use her windshield as a slide this winter. It would fly up to the roof of the car, settle down, and then *whoooosh* slide down. And then it would go back up and do it again. Not sure what kind of bird it was, but my mother was extremely amused. It was so deliberate it was clear to her that the bird was sliding just for fun.
posted by Hildegarde at 6:37 PM on September 12, 2005

The finding last year that birds navigate using visual landmarks threw cold water on various "innate" navigation ability theories, and ties in with this idea about intelligence and analytic ability.
posted by dhartung at 6:45 PM on September 12, 2005

Could this be related to the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs? If so, they've been evolving for quite a long time.
posted by bitpart at 10:02 PM on September 12, 2005

That's idle speculation from idle personage, btw.
posted by bitpart at 10:42 PM on September 12, 2005

To me the most fun & intelligent bird is the kea. A New Zealand parrot, it's cheeky, smart (see Auckland zoo's multiple attempts to keep them interested) and a right vandal. Park your car in the NZ South Island in Kea territory. Come back and find your tyre valves snipped off (so the kea can cool itself in the breeze of the air coming out), your windscreen wiper blades ripped out, the windscreen rubber ripped out (so the windshield falls out) etc. They know exactly what they're doing - having lots of fun. Saw a BBC documentary with David Attenborough (is there any living thing he hasn't talked about?) where he was clearly gobsmacked at just how hedonistic and smart these birds are.
posted by ozjohn at 5:56 AM on September 13, 2005

bitpart writes "theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs"

Not so much a theory any more, given the crazy fossils coming out of China these days - a huge number of transtional bird- to- dinosaur forms, with some amazingly well-preserved samples of dino skin, complete with feathers. So, what used to be speculation seems to be pretty much accepted fact.

lodurr & gDB, some good points. I still don't see the Lamarckian aspect of evolutionary theory though, even given that natural selection isn't the be-all and end-all of evolution. It's just the main driving force. Still, the evidence we have so far suggests that big brains only develop in complex social networks. Whether brain size allows sociality, or sociality promotes brain size... sort of a chicken-egg thing, right? Doesn't mater which comes first, what matters is the interaction between the two, where change in A drives a change in B and vice versa. The main point I make is that once such an association begins both factors play off of each other and spiral upwards - larger brains, more complex social behaviors. Throw in longer development times and parental care, and you get a learning aspect as well - evolution of behavior through learned behavior rather than genetic material. Still traits passed to offspring, but not genetic traits (aside from a genetic predisposition to learn; for example all humans are born with an innate capacity for language, so we learn it easily at a young age).

The only limiting factor in the brain size upward spiral seems to be size of head at birth vs. size of the birth canal or eggshell.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:10 PM on September 13, 2005

FWIW, I've never understood why intellect is supposed to pose a problem for "natural" selection. I think it's a problem of definition: As I've always used and understood the term, "natural selection" includes such "un-natural" change-drivers as culture. Culture is part of the environment -- culture is as "natural" as water supply or ambient temperature, though obviously not as fundamental. (So, within a limited domain -- looking strictly at factors that people can select for, themselves -- you can get results that appear to validate a Lamarckian view. But only if your experiments are sloppy.)

The key to the chicken-egg question of brain capabilities and cultural/societal complexity, I think, is time -- as you put it (well, I think), it's the spiral. (Shades of Edmund Leach.) I.e., it's cyclical, but also additive (at least, and really transformative). Even the spiral model isn't adequate; it's as though many spirals are happening at the same time, such that it becomes difficult to tease out which has what effect. In a sense, we create a story out of it that allows us to make sense of the evolution of an organism.

Anyway, this is all a derail in an old thread...
posted by lodurr at 4:26 AM on September 14, 2005