Whose smarter- you or a crow?

Now, this may appear like a silly question but these birds have passed many cognitive tests in recent years, putting their cognitive abilities up there with chimps. These birds are capable of insight learning, a skill now being seen in many animals of all taxa, whereby they don’t need any prior knowledge or social learning to solve a problem, they have an insight and solve it using brainpower and forward-planning alone.

Crows are consistently shocking us with their intelligence by passing challenging cognitive tests; for example, their ability to recognise and remember human faces and they are the only species of bird to pass the self-recognition mirror test [1]. Tool use is seen by many crow species, including Caledonian crows using hooked sticks to pull grub from tree trunk gaps [2]. This video below takes tool use to the next level and shows a crow (nicknamed 007) obtaining food by completing a sequence of eight tasks in a specific order. He must retrieve different tools from difficult locations to complete the main task of retrieving some food- like an escape room but you get a nice slice of cake at the end! Although each individual step has been seen before by 007 for a food reward, carrying out all eight steps in sequence for one reward had never been seen. Alex Taylor devised this test and thinks it is one of the most complex tasks for the animal mind to complete.

As you can see, this crow solves these eight tasks with little confusion- would humans be able to solve the same tasks as quickly? Initially, you start to question if the crow really can comprehend why he is getting the rocks from the cages, does he understand that he will need these rocks to help him get the stick? Then, he seems to have an insight and realise what the rocks are needed for- the manipulation of one tool to retrieve another tool for use in another task. One of the most impressive things about this video is the bird’s ability to understand which tools will work for the job, and which ones simply won’t function. This not only shows their ability to use tools but also their ability to understand why they need to use certain tools for specific tasks and how the tools' appearance affects its purpose. The video also highlights each task and the high brainpower needed to fully understand the consequences of each step and how it would influence the next step.

Insight learning to solve these complex cognitive tasks seems impressive, but how are these wonderful ‘bird brains’ put to good use in real life? Well, one of my favourite examples occurs in Carrion crows in Japan that want to break nuts open. Getting into nuts, or any food resource with a hard shell, is a problem many animals face; some just whack it until it opens while others use tools to assist them. It is suggested that those that use tools are generally assumed to have a higher cognitive function. These crows take getting these nuts open to the next level. Although tools aren’t necessarily used in their methods, very high awareness and cognitive ability are shown. These crows have sussed that dropping nuts into busy roads causes them to be run over by cars, cracked open and ready to eat- Bon appetit! But, to then retrieve the nuts from the road, that’s where it gets tricky- cars are coming and to dodge them isn’t always worth it. One crow had a rather smart idea while watching the humans cross the road without any risk of being hit, so decided to join in. They waited on the electric lines above and dropped their nut into the middle of the pedestrian crossing. When the cars come past, they crushed the birds nuts. They then wait patiently on the pavement for the lights to change, when they did, they crossed the road safely with the humans and collected their crushed nuts! It is thought these crows have been using this method since the 1990s to crack their nuts [2]. The amount of planning and forward-thinking this kind of plan must have required for a bird- phenomenal!

In the animal field, cognitive ability is valued as a very powerful skill- and, generally speaking, the higher an animal’s cognition, the more consideration is usually taken for their welfare and enrichment. I think animals have much better skills like breathing through their skin (frogs) and thermal vision (snakes) that are much more impressive, but you have to hand it to these crows- they are really smart! These birds can manipulate items within their environment into tools in order to fulfil their gain, a trait many scientists thought to be isolated to humans. Tool use is seen in many animal taxa now and it seems the more we test animals’ cognitive ability, the more they seem to be able to do. Imagine what these animals could do if they relied on cognitive thinking to get through their lives as much as we do- they would be unstoppable!