People have long been fascinated by the intelligence of crows, with some viewing them as omens of doom or death. Yet, can a brain the size of a human thumb really hold such remarkable intelligence?
While a crow’s brain is small compared to a human’s, what truly matters is the brain size relative to the animal’s body. The crow’s brain and the primate’s brain are relatively similar in proportion to the body size. According to research by Professor John Marzluff from the Avian Conservation Lab at the University of Washington, the crow is a “flying monkey" in essence. Whether it is a friendly monkey or more like a demon from The Wizard of Oz, that depends largely on how you treat the crow (or any of its friends)—for it never forgets.
What abilities do crows have?
- The ability to recognize human faces: Crows can remember an individual’s face and distinguish it from others. What about you? Can you tell crows apart and recognize each one individually?
- The ability to communicate with one another, share information, and ensure it is remembered by the group: This means that crows are not only able to remember your face, but they can also tell their entire family about it—and even agree to attack you if necessary. So, never bother a crow; it never forgets and may return for revenge, along with its whole family.
- Problem-solving ability: Crows are the only non-primate animals that can create new tools. In addition to using sticks as spears and hooks, crows can bend wires to make tools brand new ones.
In Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher”, a thirsty crow drops stones into a pitcher of water to raise the water level so it can drink. Scientists tested whether crows were truly this intelligent by placing a floating treat in a deep tube. In the experiment, the crows dropped dense objects into the water until the treat floated within their reach. The crows did not choose objects that would float on the water, nor ones that were too large for the pitcher. Human children acquire this understanding by the age of five to seven years.
- The ability to plan for the future: planning ahead is not only a human trait. For example, squirrels store nuts for times of scarcity. Crows, however, not only plan for the future, but also take how other crows think into consideration. When a crow hides food, it looks around to see if anyone is watching. If it sees another animal watching, it will pretend to hide its treasure, but in reality, it hides it within its feathers. Then, it would fly away in search of a new secret hiding place. If a crow sees another crow hiding food, it would not be fooled by this distraction game. Instead, it will follow to discover the location of the new hiding place.
- Ability to adapt: Crows coped with life in a human-dominated world; they watch what we do and learn from us. They have been observed dropping nuts onto roads for cars to crack them open; they even watch traffic lights and only collect the nuts when the pedestrian signal is on. They also remember restaurant schedules and garbage collection days, exploiting peak times to search for food. Watch video
- The ability to recognize similarities: Do you know the verbal analogy question on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT)? Although it is unlikely that a crow would outperform you on a test, it is still capable of grasping abstract concepts, including similarities. Ed Wasserman and his team in Moscow trained crows to match similar items (having the same color, shape, or number). After that, the birds were tested to see if they could match items that had the same relationship. For example, the circle and the square are matched by the colors red and green, unlike the two oranges. The crows grasped the connection on the first try, without receiving any training on the concept of "same and different".
Last but not least, we cannot say that only the crow observes and learns from humans. Rather, this bird was humanity’s first teacher since the beginning of creation; it taught the Son of Adam how to bury his dead brother. The crow continues to teach us through the knowledge and wisdom God endowed it with, which is revealed with every new discovery we make about this creature.
References
link.springer.com
news.bbc.co.uk
news.harvard.edu
nwf.org
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
sciencenews.org
ted.com
washington.edu
Cover image Carrion_crow_(Corvus_corone) Head. Source: Wikimedia Commons.