True. They are immensely intelligent, as far as humans are concerned or worthy to judge. Crows are one of the best animals at solving novel problems- things they aren’t specifically adapted to by nature, like new situations and variables. They can learn symbols, remember faces, use tools, and they use their environment interactively. They have very large brains for the bird kingdom, with large frontal cortex- where logic and reason are supposed to occur. They mate for life, even if a mate is injured, and they show some evidence of applied basic math. Awesome birds.
Crows hold fucking funerals for each other. Even if it's so all the other crows know what killed that one crow, they still hold funerals. That is amazing. Elephants and whales/dolphins are the closest to that... and they have 10,000x the brain mass.
And to the thought that any animal that smart can be an asshole? While not scientifically proven, crows are observed to hold grudges and harass those they begrudge.
one documentary i watch on it had a group of crows around a uni where one of the lead people in the group went and wore a mask and scared the birds away really often and they recognized the mask and aggressively cawed when he came around wearing the mask. I think it was like a crow generation later that they had someone else wearing the same mask go through there and they reacted the same way even tho none of the crows left had ever seen the mask before.
We haven't really even begun to understand the brains of whales so far. but they have been observed mourning their dead. And elephants have also been observed holding funerals, and investigating the bones of any dead of their kind.
But, yes, crows are unbelievably intelligent. Magpies, and ravens, too, although they're all part of the corvid family. I remember reading about a group of university students who were trying to study crows for whatever reason. So they captured some from around campus, did their observations, then released them.
The crows proceeded to harass the students that captured/observed them every single day until the students eventually graduated and moved away from the school. And, when the students returned years later, the crows still remembered them
^ this shit is why you're not supposed to react aggressively when crows swoop at you.
These crows used to take the cable from the satellite dish and drop it so it would bang against my parents window. Damn crows did it for years until they died.
But, yes, crows are unbelievably intelligent. Magpies, and ravens, too, although they're all part of the corvid family. I remember reading about a group of university students who were trying to study crows for whatever reason. So they captured some from around campus, did their observations, then released them.
The crows proceeded to harass the students that captured/observed them every single day until the students eventually graduated and moved away from the school. And, when the students returned years later, the crows still remembered them
^ this shit is why you're not supposed to react aggressively when crows swoop at you.
(Feel like I have to add that this is a joke. The crows died)