If you conducted a survey and asked people to name their favorite birds, hardly anyone would mention crows. Being aggressive scavengers with strident “caw-caw-caw” calls, crows have a bad reputation. But in many cities around the world, these noisy creatures give a boost to human productivity every morning, ensuring that nobody oversleeps.
Crows are extremely intelligent creatures, as scientists are discovering. How smart are they? They’re so smart that if you took a group of crows into an IKEA store, almost all of them would be able to find their way out. Any crows remaining in the store would be swiping Swedish meatballs from the restaurant or using a crowbar to open a window.
Scientists haven’t actually tested crows in IKEA, but have demonstrated the intelligence of crows in many other ways. Most recently, a team of researchers at University of Tübingen’s animal physiology lab in Germany determined that crows can vocally count to four, much like toddlers do, but with far less drool.
The research team, led by Professor Andreas Nieder from the university’s Institute of Neurobiology, conducted behavioral experiments with three carrion crows whom they had trained for a year. After seeing certain numerals or hearing a number of sounds, the birds had to produce one to four calls to match what they saw or heard, and then peck on an “enter” key. “All three birds succeeded in this. They were able to count their calls in sequence,” Nieder said. The birds weren’t perfect, of course, but Nieder declined to give each crow a grade or reveal which crow was top of the class. No report cards were sent home to Mama Crow, who had a little less to crow about.
The crows did not respond right away, and their response time was dependent on the number of calls they needed to emit. The higher the number, the longer the response time. The crows had to both recognize the number and plan their vocal response accordingly. “Our results show that humans are not the only ones who can do this,” Nieder said, sharing a fact that did not surprise members of the rock band Counting Crows.
Counting is just one of the many attributes of crows. Here are some other amazing attributes:
Picking up trash: A company in Sweden designed a machine that rewards crows with a little bit of food whenever they deposit cigarette butts in the machine. “They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis,” Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, told The Guardian. It’s easier to get wild birds to care about the environment than wild humans.
Using tools: Scientists have found that crows can not only use tools, they can create tools. In 2018, a group of scientists at Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and the University of Oxford showed that New Caledonian crows could create a tool and then use that tool to assemble IKEA furniture. No, they didn’t assemble any furniture, but they were able to combine four short sticks into a long stick, which they used to retrieve food from a box.
Giving free vacations to Supreme Court Justices: You may have heard that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas got free plane rides and vacations. This was no ordinary American crow that gave him this, of course. This was a well-feathered one named Harlan Crow.
Reducing waste: Crows are omnivores and will eat just about anything, including insects, fruits, nuts, dead animals and garbage. When a crow spots an open landfill, it’s like a human spotting an open China Buffet.
Baby Crow: “Mama, why is it called a landfill?”
Mama Crow: “Because wherever you land, you can get your fill.”
It irks me that animals' intelligence is routinely assessed in human terms. I don't care that crow can count to four - counting is just not relevant to their existence. Would we thnk they were smarter if we could train them to count to ten? So you can train crows to pick up cigarette buts, but you get bird shit in exchange.. In human terms, birds or other animals might not be problem solvers, but they are not problem-causers either (except of course in human terms).
I love crows; they are so clever. Watching how they make tools just blows your mind. Great piece.