crows

These Crows Evolved Into a New Species, Boned the Old Species Too Much, Now Back Where They Started

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a glacier advanced upon the Pacific Northwest, its ice forming a natural barrier that fractured crows into two populations. These populations began to diverge into two separate species, which ornithologists decided were distinguishable by small differences in body measurements and the sounds they made. At least, that’s what they…

Crows Get Higher Cholesterol From Eating Our Cheeseburgers

City living is producing something new for you to worry about: high crow-lesterol (sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying to delete it). Crows generally aren’t picky eaters, and primarily survive on plants, carrion, and food scavenged from human-produced sources like landfills and garbage cans. But the food we throw away might not be as healthy for these…

French Theme Park Employs Trained Birds to Pick Up Cigarette Butts

A French theme park has begun using six trained birds belonging to the crow family to pick up litter and cigarette butts, the BBC reports. Puy du Fou is a historical theme park in Les Epesses, France, where its estimated 2 million annual visitors can learn about the French Revolution, Vikings, the Middle Ages, and…

Raccoon Vs. Crow Is the Alien Vs. Predator of Trash Animals

Nature isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it’s just gnarly as hell. A recent video titled “Raccoon vs Crow” illustrates this well, showing two of the world’s most iconic urban animals engaging in a dramatic—if brief—battle to the death. Gizmodo prefers not take sides in cases of natural predation, but according to science writer (and bird lover)…

Crows Are Officially More Badass Than Ravens, Citizen Scientists Report

Crows and ravens are hard to tell apart, but basically, the common raven is bigger than the American and Northwestern crow. So, you might think that ravens would win in a fight. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. One thing you might not know about bird nerds is that many of us are…

Neat Experiment Suggests Crows Are Even Better Toolmakers Than We Thought

New research shows that crows can recreate tools from memory, a capacity previously thought impossible for birds. Crows are super smart—we knew that already. In addition to understanding causality and analogies, they can remember human faces, plan ahead, and hide their food from others. But crows are also known for their amazing tool-building skills, which…

Seattle Neighbors Are Seriously Pissed About Those Crows That Bring Gifts to an 8-year-old Girl

Remember that 8-year-old girl who receives small objects from crows in return for feeding them? Well, her parents are now facing a $200,000 lawsuit accusing them of running a large-scale feeding operation out of their backyard. Earlier this year, the BBC’s Katy Sewall told the story of Gabi Mann, an 8-year-old Seattle girl who, since…

All These Gifts Were Given To An 8-Year-Old Girl By Crows

Since the age of four, Gabi Mann of Seattle has forged a relationship with the neighborhood crows by offering them food. Then suddenly something unexpected happened — the crows, in an apparent act of reciprocation, started to present various trinkets to Gabi in return. As BBC’s Katy Sewall reports, it all started quite innocently when,…

Crows Are Even Smarter Than We Thought Possible 

We know that crows understand causality, the relationship between cause and effect. We also know they have mad tool skills. Now, a new research collaboration between Moscow State University and the University of Iowa suggests that crows are also capable of analogical thinking, a realm of reasoning thought only available to primates. https://gizmodo.com/crows-understand-a-fundamental-part-of-logical-reasonin-1553222215 Scientific American…

People Are Animals, Too

Tommy the chimpanzee got his day in court on October 8, 2014. He was unable to attend the hearing in ‘person’ – spending the day, like any other, in a cage in Gloversville, New York. But in an Albany courtroom, Steven Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project argued that Tommy should be considered a person…

Stop Picking On Crows: Study Reveals the Birds Aren’t Evil Predators

We are huge fans of crows here, and now a new meta-analysis of 42 studies reveals that corvids don’t have a negative impact on prey species. So South Africa’s campaign to poison crows appears to be misguided. Image: Crow (disambiguation) by Kevin Cole/flickr/CC By 2.0 Dr. Arjun Amar, an ornithologist at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute…

A Fascinating Documentary on Crows, One of the World’s Smartest Animals

There’s no better way to celebrate Halloween than by snuggling up with this mesmerizing PBS documentary, A Murder of Crows, first aired in 2010 and now available free online. We actually get to see some of the experiments that offered solid evidence that crows are breathtakingly smart tool users. Spend an hour getting to know…

Here’s What Crows and Ravens Are Really Saying

OK, so we don’t know exactly what they’re saying, though I suspect that at least some of the time they are yelling, “Give me a peanut, human!” But this fantastic video from ornithologist Kevin McGowan helps you recognize the difference between crow and raven calls, as well as what they could mean. Anyone who has…

Watching a falcon hunt down a crow in the air is pretty terrifying

Seeing a falcon hunt down a crow from the falcon’s point of view in an aerial pursuit is not unlike seeing an airplane dogfight or a crazy aerial chase scene from an action movie. Only this is happening in nature all the time. And this particular crow has no chance against the falcons. A Reddit…

Bear Interrupts Meal to Rescue a Crow.

Well, fuck. I don’t know how we’re ever going to defeat the corvid apocalypse if crows can convince bears to join their side just by being loud. This bear at the Budapest Zoo waded into his pool to rescue a crow and then just returned to his lunch. Mostly, he seems annoyed at the noise.…

Clever crow knows exactly how to solve different puzzles to get food

I love it when animals can solve puzzles and problems that I can’t even figure out. Here’s a crow going through a bunch of different exercises to show its understanding of size, weight, density, the elements and even the amount of effort it should put in to a puzzle to win its reward. The crow…

I Am So Tempted to Say that These European Crows Are Racists

In Europe, there are two groups of crows who are almost identical — except for for thing. Carrion crows are all black, while hooded crows have patches of gray. Each group prefers to mate with their own color. It sounds like what humans would call racism, but instead it’s a lesson in the limits of…

In a crushing blow to the egos of clever corvids everywhere, a group of Caledonian crows has been outwitted in a causality test by a bunch of human babies. “It’s a rare failure,” writes Khadim Shubber over atWired, “but it appears they are unable to interpret cause and effect to create new solutions without direct…

Crows Understand a Fundamental Part of Logical Reasoning

Crows are far more rational than we had realized. New research shows that wild New Caledonian crows can compete with 7-year-old children when it comes to understanding causality, or how one action causes another. Round objects always roll down hills. Dense objects sink. What goes up must come down. Researchers have used various experimental methods…

Watch a genius crow solve 8 complex puzzles in perfect order

Meet 007. Not Bond but the bird. But they might just be as smart as one another because the crow can use tools to figure out complex puzzles just as well as a spy. Here’s a crow taking one of the most complex tests for the animal mind ever created. If he succeeds, the BBC…