Crow Intelligence Study Suggests The Birds Have 'Theory Of Mind'

[Zimobog]

Forgot to mention that the bird pulls his head out with the hood stuck to him. Take him home and dab water on the glue until the paper falls off.

[lxskllr]

Catching a crow isnt easy, but the old timers taught me a trick. Get next to a corn field they are visiting. Make small brown paper "hoods" like a paper cone the size of a crows head. Dig out and place the hood in soil with the skinny end down, like a funnel. Sprinkle loose corn on the ground around the traps and put one kernel of loose corn in each hood. Now take a water soluable glue and dab it all over the inside of the funnels. Sit back and watch. Murder of crows lands in corn, starts pecking corn on the ground, one sticks his head down in the brown paper funnel which sticks to his beak and covers the eyes. Crow hops around on ground, you step out and scoop him up. Crow pet!

That really works?! Hmm... That sounds much better than climbing to the top of a pine tree and snatching a chick.

[Zimobog]

Catching a crow isnt easy, but the old timers taught me a trick. Get next to a corn field they are visiting. Make small brown paper "hoods" like a paper cone the size of a crows head. Dig out and place the hood in soil with the skinny end down, like a funnel. Sprinkle loose corn on the ground around the traps and put one kernel of loose corn in each hood. Now take a water soluable glue and dab it all over the inside of the funnels. Sit back and watch. Murder of crows lands in corn, starts pecking corn on the ground, one sticks his head down in the brown paper funnel which sticks to his beak and covers the eyes. Crow hops around on ground, you step out and scoop him up. Crow pet!

[YfirBaggari]

Hahahah, a dog in a crows body..

[Crow]

One more...

[Crow]

Very fun to watch the crows here tease my dog, he always thinks he's about to catch them when they either fly just a bit further away from him or over him and closer to me, letting him run back and forth.

I think the crows know what they are doing, sadly I think my dog doesen't know that they do...

[YfirBaggari]

Very fun to watch the crows here tease my dog, he always thinks he's about to catch them when they either fly just a bit further away from him or over him and closer to me, letting him run back and forth.

I think the crows know what they are doing, sadly I think my dog doesen't know that they do...

[Crow]

Here is a good article that tells of their intelligence and some of the problems they can cause. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle1091590/

When hunters fired shotguns at the Chatham crows, he says, the birds figured out exactly how high to fly to escape the pellet range. When city workers made nightly rounds to disturb them, the crows learned that the workers clocked out at 11 p.m., and simply waited until 11:01 to head into town for the night.

Hahaha!!

[crullers]

Crows are definitely highly intelligent creatures but they can be a huge nuisance too. The town I work in is on their migratory path and it's pretty surreal watching them come into town from the country at nightfall. Thousands of them as far as the eye can see. Here is a good article that tells of their intelligence and some of the problems they can cause. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle1091590/

[CoderGuy]

Crows and squirrels both are so smart, we get a kick out of watching them around here.

[lxskllr]

Crows are great birds. They're brilliant, and under appreciated by most people. I've always wanted one as a pet, but could never find a nest I had access to.

[Zimobog]

Bogart the Bird. Lol
Hey, so cool article but I supposed I always figured animals could always tell what I was thinking. Thats why I take a camera when I hunt and concentrate on just having a good time camping and viewing nature. If something pops out, bonus time and thr freezer gets full. Ungulates (deer family) are way smarter than people think and i think they can sense bloodlust.

[Crow]

Speakin of crows, Crow: i love that little video of the crow on your sig. That stoner's face is so elated before becoming completly crestfallen when the crow takes his spliff as to cause me to laugh almost everytime I see it.

Thanks bud

I know what was on the crow's mind as that bloke reached for the spliff............. "I don't think so!"

[Zimobog]

Speakin of crows, Crow: i love that little video of the crow on your sig. That stoner's face is so elated before becoming completly crestfallen when the crow takes his spliff as to cause me to laugh almost everytime I see it.

[Crow]

Are crows mind readers? Recent studies have suggested that the birds hide food because they think others will steal it -- a complex intuition that has been seen in only a select few creatures. Some critics have suggested that the birds might simply be stressed out, but new research reveals that crows may be gifted after all.

Cracks first began forming in the crow mind-reading hypothesis last year. One member of a research team from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands spent 7 months in bird cognition expert Nicola Clayton's University of Cambridge lab in the United Kingdom studying Western scrub jays, a member of the crow family that is often used for these studies. The Groningen team then developed a computer model in which "virtual jays" cached food under various conditions. In PLOS ONE, they argued that the model showed the jays' might be moving their food—or recaching it—not because they were reading the minds of their competitors, but simply because of the stress of having another bird present (especially a more dominant one) and of losing food to thieves. The result contradicted previous work by Clayton's group suggesting that crows might have a humanlike awareness of other creatures' mental states—a cognitive ability known as theory of mind that has been claimed in dogs, chimps, and even rats.

In the new study, Clayton and her Cambridge graduate student James Thom decided to test the stress hypothesis. First, they replicated earlier work on scrub jays by letting the birds hide peanuts in trays of ground corn cobs—either unobserved or with another bird watching—and later giving them a chance to rebury them. As in previous studies, the jays recached a much higher proportion of the peanuts if another bird could see them: nearly twice as much as in private, the team reports online today in PLOS ONE.

Then came the stress test. First, Thom and Clayton gave the jays trays with the ground cobs but no food to hide in them—a so-called "sham" session. Then, in a second session, they gave the birds new hiding trays and bowls of peanuts to hide. When the jays were done, the experimenters removed the trays and stole all of the peanuts. Finally, after a short break, the researchers gave each bird yet another round of food, a new tray to hide it in, and one of the trays it had seen earlier: either the sham tray or the ransacked "pilfer" tray. The jays had 10 minutes for recaching.

If the Groningen model was correct, Thom and Clayton argue, the stress of discovering that food was missing from the pilfer tray ought to drive jays to cache more peanuts than those presented with the sham tray. In fact, there was no difference, even though corvids have excellent memories for hidden food and remarkable abilities to find it again. The hypothesis that jays have theory of mind remains on the table, Thom says.

Thom and Clayton have "definitely shown that scrub recaching is not as simple as the [Groningen] model presents it," says Elske van der Vaart, lead author of the Groningen team's earlier report, who is now at the University of Amsterdam. But she argues that there is still room for doubt about what the results mean. For example, the sham condition—in which the jays had no food to cache—could have stressed the birds as much as the stolen peanuts in the pilfer condition did.

Continued...