Crows using 3 tools to get 1 lump of meat

news.bbc.co.uk...

New Caledonian crows have given scientists yet another display of their tool-using prowess. Scientists from New Zealand's University of Auckland have found that the birds are able to use three tools in succession to reach some food. The crows, which use tools in the wild, have also shown other problem-solving behaviour, but this find suggests they are more innovative than was thought.

A little video to go with it on the bbc link. Clever little buggers ain't they? Takes the stick off the string, then uses it to get the stick out of the cage, to get the meat of out its hiding place. I know some people who'd probably have struggled with that one

[edit on 21/4/2010 by Acidtastic]

its funny humans have spent thousands of years trying to distance our selves from animals yet were just starting to learn (at least in this culture/civilization) the true intelligence of animals. from communication to animals doing things for pleasure . were only scratching the surface.

This sort of thing just goes to show that if all Humans were destroyed, in a few million years, some other creature would take our place, wasting time on the internet.

I've always said that crows are as smart as the apes.

When i was a kid, me and my cousin would try and blast them with our shotguns. The crows were super smart though. You could pick up a stick or broom and point it at them and they would just chill in the trees. But if you picked up your shotgun they'd fly off squawcking their heads off, lol.

When i was older, up in Alaska, i was running a commercial fishing boat. If you left the salmon roe (eggs) on deck, one crow (or raven), would land on the bow of the boat and act like it was hurt. It would hop around and drag it's wings and screech and squawck and make all sorts of crazy noises. Inevitably we would all start staring at it wondering WTF was wrong with it....all the while two other ones would be stealing the roe from the decks behind us. Then they would all fly off laughing hysterically and fly to the beach and SHARE the roe.

Pretty cool-a$$ birds IMO. Especially the ravens.

reply to post by Romans 10:9


i know what you mean once my dog attacked an injured crow for months afterwords a group of crows swooped roof to roof following us our whole route occasionally diving at my dog but you knew they had that intent to cause harm. now the same thing happens with the local gulls . one of these days their gonna aim one of those dive bombs and cause my pooch some serious harm. i find that scary yet very clever it shows they have good memories communication and organization that rivals only la cosa nostra

reply to post by Romans 10:9


i know what you mean once my dog attacked an injured crow for months afterwords a group of crows swooped roof to roof following us our whole route occasionally diving at my dog but you knew they had that intent to cause harm. now the same thing happens with the local gulls . one of these days their gonna aim one of those dive bombs and cause my pooch some serious harm. i find that scary yet very clever it shows they have good memories communication and organization that rivals only la cosa nostra

Yes, they are amazing! We had a crow once as a pet :-). My sister picked him up, when he was a baby-crow and had fallen off (or pushed) from the nest. He couldn´t fly, but we gave him vitamines and good food, so he got stronger and stronger. He lived freely in our house and outside (learned to knock when he wanted to come back in btw), ate with us on the table corner, brought my Mom little picec of food for presents... it was great time After 2 years he finally learned to fly and got married as we like to say . A female crow showed up and started to fly over the house. They both made so strange and interesting sounds. And finally they flew away together.
Another interesting thing is, that we picked him up in the town almost 200 km from the place he grew up. But we had appartement in this town, so once we were moving to another appartement, all my family were there. It was over a year we´d had this crow, I don´t remember exactly. But when we had our last things packed into car and we started to drive to another place for good, there were suddenly crows everywhere, very many of them - they flew circling low over our heads for some time and then took off. It was like they knew we helped one of them and they came to say thank you :-). I´ve read about theories, that animals and birds can somehow exchange information over long distance. Yes, there is so many we still don´t know about them.

Thanks for posting this!

reply to post by Amandla


nice story iv heard of a few stories similar but the only one iv seen for real was a local gamekeeper who youst to bring a young fox to his local on some string i remember it being a very timid creature not like a dog as i thought it would be but it was very close to this guy and when he finally released it it came back to his house every night and would scratch at his door and he in turn would feed the fox leftovers of what ever was for lunch that day. unfortunately a year or so later this lovely beast was found squashed on the road. also new a guy out in the sticks would feed a couple of sparrows from hand they'd come right into his living room he's a lonely old chap and told me he'd been coaxing them slowly to do so for some time now and as far as i know still does. its amazing to see that kind of bond between wild animals and humans. it shows are capacity to live with nature not against it as we so often do and I'm sure these cases aren't to uncommon either. but lovely never less