Years ago I was putting out the garbage in the back alley behind our building where I lived on the 8th floor. A crow attacked me out of the blue. Distracted by the attack, the back door slammed shut behind me. Since my key was only good for the front door, I had to walk around the building. That damn crow followed me the entire time, dive bombing my head, and screaming bloody murder at me. It was a little spooky.
When I finally got back inside and upstairs, I went and looked out the living room window, which looked out the same direction as the back alley. The crow had flown back around and was at the 8th floor looking in the window, from the other side of the pigeon netting we had on our balcony. On the inside of the pigeon netting, was another crow, desperately trying to figure out how it could escape. Not really sure how it had got itself through the pigeon netting in the first place.
I went out and sliced a hole through the netting and the trapped crow quickly joined its mate outside, who finally stopped screaming bloody murder. To this day it still amazes me that the crow's mate, knew which apartment I lived in and spotted me downstairs.
One day I was out walking by the water. A small bird was standing on a rock, apparently unable to fly. Crows were gathering and preparing to feast. I tried to scare them off, and sat by the little bird to prevent them from eating it. Silly, but it seemed right to me. The crows were not impressed. They became more daring, and eventually I decided to leave. A trio of crows broke off from the group and followed me all the way home, perhaps a mile's distance. They flew from branch to branch as I walked, with the tail crow moving to the lead every time. The tactical pattern continued the entire time.
Maybe it was just me, but for months I could have sworn there were crows out sounding the alarm whenever I left my apartment.
Bears are another animal that seem to recognize individuals and take offences personally.
This is only inspirationally relevant, but a few weeks ago, I saw a crow (or a raven, never quite sure) holding a stick, floating without moving, on top of Twin Peaks in SF, like it was waiting to give a wand to a wizard. When I got home, I wrote this weird little story about it: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/a-great-unkindness...
Assuming you mean it's difficult to tell the difference, as opposed to just in this case:
Telling them apart is fairly straightforward! Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically flap quite a bit during flight. Ravens, by comparison, are much larger in size, have a diamond-shaped tail that moves quite a bit during flight, and typically glide during flight.
Love the whole family of corvids :D as well as your story!
In the 'Once and Future King', the boy who will be King Arthur looses an arrow into the air, just for the joy of it. A crow comes out of nowhere and grabs the arrow. Art's foster brother believes the crow was actually a witch (Morgan le Fay?).
I'm just saying - keep an eye out for witches ;)
"Just as [the arrow] had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak."
I also read a comment online somewhere (maybe here?) recently where someone talked about a crow they met years ago while in college at the local Taco Bell who would exchange nickels for tacos. I believe they said that crow would even croak "TACO" when it presented the nickel.
Similarly, I was impressed/frightened to learn that some hawks in Australia purposely start wildfires to flush out prey (by taking burning sticks from one wildfire to start others).
Or sledding, using discarded plastic lids, for the sheer fun. I've seen young raven fledglings flinging pinecones at eachother, and there's a sense of play and joy in what they do.
Good for them, the more conscious creatures we share the universe with, the better. Well, the planet, anyway. While we're nominally in charge. If we can avoid screwing everything up too badly.
Actually, hell, can the ravens take over? We seem to be bodging things up just a bit.
Whereas the nut cracking is cool for the intelligence shown towards survival, the one that truly astounds me is intelligence for the sake of having fun. Crow skiing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
It continues to surprise me that humans are surprised at other animals having deep intelligence and emotions and thoughts. As if the fact that animals don't speak English or whatever else human language is somehow a negative reflection upon them.
Same here. As someone who has spent his life around many animals, either as pets or in the wild or other contexts, it’s very plain that humans are surrounded by respectably sentient creatures. It always floors me whenever people are shocked at the complex thoughts, emotions, behavior and planning capabilities of non-human animals. It really just seems fundamentally obvious if you bother to interact with other creatures long enough. Heck, I’ve run into way too many people who refuse to even acknowledge that we humans are animals as well and I feel this innate arrogance persists to our detriment.
"As if they are inferior because they don't speak English" is a pretty cheap shot; cows eat grass, what reason do they have for deep intelligence and thoughts, why would you expect a-priori that they must have such? It's sometimes suggested that human intelligence rose quite quickly from trying to outwit other humans; do cows try to outwit each other and slaughter other cow tribes to take control of their fields?
Another point is, other animals do dumb things - like videos of ducks walking over drains and the ducklings fall down the drain, or creature stuck in plastic sheet until it dies. Or creature does nothing while humans approach, kill, and eat it. It's hard to see examples like that and think "deep intelligence".
Emotions, yes - a lot of fear, pain, excitement, skittishness, visible in a lot of animal behviours. But examples of planning ahead, cooperation, tool using, they're so rare they make headlines like this article when observed.
When I was younger, I read many books by Henri Laborit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Laborit) -- his work is predominantly in French. As a surgeon and neurobiologist, he wrote a lot about the biology of behaviour. I can't find the interview anymore, but during an interview (also in French) with a Canadian journalist he quipped this: "L'homme est un animal, le problème c'est qu'il parle." (roughly: "Man is an animal, the problem is that he uses language.") And, so, I agree with the essence of your position. But maybe the problem isn't that humans are surprised that other animals feeling/thinking. Rather the problem might be that humans think they actually aren't animals to begin with.
It really shouldn't surprise you given the amount of humans that treat other humans like they lack deep intelligence, emotions and thoughts if they don't speak English.
To test whether crows know and can analyze the contents of their brains...trained two birds to peck a red or a blue target on a panel, depending whether they saw a faint light."
"[Researcher] Nieder kept varying the “rule,” with the birds told which color meant what — red = saw it, or blue = saw it — only after the flash. That required the crows, Glenn and Ozzy, to keep monitoring their brains; they had a second or two to figure out what they had seen and tell Nieder by choosing the corresponding target.
While the crows were solving these tasks, the researchers were tracking the activity of hundreds of their neurons. (Crows’ brains have 1.5 billion neurons, as many as some monkey species.)
"When the crows reported having seen a faint light, sensory neurons were active between the flash and the birds pecking the color that meant, yes, I saw that. If the crows did not perceive the very same faint stimulus, the nerve cells remained silent, and the bird pecked, no, I didn’t see anything. Ozzy and Glenn’s brain activity systematically changed depending on whether or not they had perceived the dim flash.
"During the delay, many neurons responded according to the crows’ impending report, rather than to the brightness of the light... The birds were aware of what they subjectively perceived, flash or no flash, correctly reporting what their sensory neurons recorded..."
I know this isn't scientific, but for those who may entertain the idea of a Creator, there's a mention of crow behaviour in the Quran, where it describes the story of Abel and Cain (sons of Adam and Eve), and how after Cain killed his brother, God sent a crow to teach him about burial:
"Then Allah sent a crow searching in the ground to show him how to hide the disgrace of his brother. He said, “O woe to me! Have I failed to be like this crow and hide the body of my brother?” And he became of the regretful." (5:31)
I once heard a theory that the story of cain and abel is about the agriculturalists killing the nomadic people by taking their lands ("killing their brother") idk how you'd think of the crow part in that interpretation but something to think about.
European magpies have been documented to hold wakes for fallen flock members. It's not impossible crows have similar bit undocumented ceremonies. They definitely have a rudimentary culture.
>To test whether crows know and can analyze the contents of their brains, neurobiologist Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen in Germany trained two birds to peck a red or a blue target on a panel, depending whether they saw a faint light. Nieder kept varying the “rule,” with the birds told which color meant what — red = saw it, or blue = saw it — only after the flash. That required the crows, Glenn and Ozzy, to keep monitoring their brains; they had a second or two to figure out what they had seen and tell Nieder by choosing the corresponding target.
... I don't actually understand what this means. Am I dumb or is this just badly written? Can someone explain? What is Nieder actually doing here, and how does it test whether the crows are introspecting? How are they "told" which color meant what?
If there was a faint light, and the red target appears, the birds were taught (how?) to peck it. If there was light and a blue target appears, don't peck it. If there was no light, and the blue target appears, peck it, and if the target is red, don't peck it.
So peck a red target = "I saw a light", peck a blue target = "I didn't see a light". If the opposite color target appears to what you need to peck, don't peck it.
Or: Target is red, did I see a light? If yes, peck it. Target is blue. Was there a light? If there wasn't, peck it.
I didn't continue reading the paper, but I guess the researchers concluded since they crows could answer the "Did I see a light?" question correctly most (i.e. statistically significant amount) of the times, it shows they can ponder the contents of their brains.
I think the real question here is when consciousness evolved and where did it evolve from? Researchers have always felt a cerebral cortex is necessary to experience "consciousness" but crows have confirmed that's not necessary which only deepens the mystery:
This research has important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of higher intelligence. First, a cerebral cortex is not needed, and there are other anatomical means to achieve the same outcome. Second, either the evolution of consciousness is very ancient, tracing back to the last common ancestor of mammals and birds about 320 million years ago, or, equally intriguing, consciousness arose at least twice later on, independently in mammals and birds. Both options raise the likelihood, in my view, that higher intelligence on other planets may not necessarily be mammal or human-like, but could very well be birdlike.
We have a family of Crows who comes every morning, calls my wife, who gives them some treats and then go about their day. Sometimes they return at noon for lunch. We started leaving them puzzles to get to their food but they solved these pretty quickly. We now need to up our game. Originally it was just a couple. At some point only one came, which meant the other was watching their egg/offspring. Sure enough some time later kiddo joined them. Amazing bird.
Maybe one day we’ll start accepting we’re not the only “intelligent” things on this planet and start treating all animals a little better/stop eating them.
Human behavior must be very confusing to the animals who observe it. The strange situations we create by (for example) dropping nets and catching dolphins, only to let them free. (Do they know we put out those nets, or are we just helpful monkeys that sit on the evil loud floating net monster and sometimes save them?).
And I wonder if the animals that we run these intelligence tests on know the humans are behind the tests. Maybe if crows achieve a culture with legends and stories, they'll have the a trickster god -- white coat, glasses man. For lab rats I guess white coat glasses man would take a more malicious aspect.
Humans have achieved not just intelligence but co-operation.
we are "herd" enough that the benefits of learning from others overcomes the need to be smart enough to work it out yourself.
But individualistic enough that we won't follow the herd all the time (we might want to improve that given the success of religion and dictators).
But what I am trying to say is that intelligence is a necessary but not sufficbet condition. We also need ... politics ... for want of a better word.
Our brains seem to be wired as levels of co-operating systems coming to collective decisions - and that is a pretty good way to describe politics and society.
Human species is less a collection of organisms feeding and dying and more a distributed brain, trying to wake up.
Now that each node has a pocket sized way to communicate with each other node, I wonder what the conditions for consciousness really are?
Have you read Swarm by Norman Spinrad? It's a short-story which illustrates some of the points you have made by bringing an alien species that are less individually intelligent but more hive-oriented than human beings into the mix.
I had a crow that was on my back porch last year trying to tell me something, but I don't think I was clever enough to know what it was trying to say.
I could walk out on the porch and get within a foot or two of it without it flying away.
I hadn't been feeding them or anything.
I put out some water and ran the garden hose a bit and put out a bit of bread thinking that food or water was probably what it was looking for (it was during some very hot days in Seattle). It didn't really act all that interested in what I did though.
My house sits at near tree-top level, Steller's jays are frequent visitors. Like other corvids they're intelligent but also cranky, often contentious critters. The jays absolutely adore peanuts. Fun to watch their peanut selection procedure. They'll pick up a peanut then put it down, pick up another one put it down, maybe go back to first one. We're convinced they're hefting peanuts to select the heaviest. Then there's the occasional very vocal "argument" that breaks out. Bears astonishingly close resemblance to shrill overwrought political "discussions" we've heard, it's hilarious. Without doubt the jays are comedians in the avian community.
Curiously crows (abundant around here too) have displayed little interest in the peanuts on offer. OTOH there have been "wars" between the crows and jays, not sure what "issues" precipitated highly vocal confrontations. I assume it was territorial. Significantly there was never any evidence of killed or wounded black or blue participants.
Strikes me as sad and shameful that these corvid cousins know more about resolving differences than we humans ever seem to learn.
About a year ago my dog (~7mo at the time) would lunge at the ravens and try to chase them even though he was on a leash. I changed my route to prevent that behavior, but the ravens remembered both of us.
One morning they flew above us with a rotting sausage and dropped it right in front of my dog and waited for him to eat it. I had to pull it out of his mouth and when I looked up the ravens were all watching us.
I can’t say for sure, but it certainly felt like revenge.
The strangest picture I ever took was of an upside down crow. It's the first load on our band website https://blameclub.com
I posted it to Reddit at the time and got a bunch of suggestions ranging from "it's dead" to "crows love to play tricks". I never got to the bottom of what was going on.
Ever since I was a kid, whenever I would read things like this or stuff about animals doing human-like things, I always wind up thinking "what would it be like to be <whatever animal> for a day?", and in particular, what exactly _are_ the similarities between human cognition and other animals'. Even as a thought experiment along the lines of "assume we had a machine that could swap brains", it's always seems reasonable to assume that there are certain faculties that we possess that would not translate and would render the experience uncomprehendable (i.e., as a bird, do I even have the ability to actively probe my consciousness, to conceive and remember higher-order thoughts? I've always assumed the answer is a hard no).
I find myself wondering more and more if we are more similar than I give animals credit for.
[+] [-] tux1968|4 years ago|reply
When I finally got back inside and upstairs, I went and looked out the living room window, which looked out the same direction as the back alley. The crow had flown back around and was at the 8th floor looking in the window, from the other side of the pigeon netting we had on our balcony. On the inside of the pigeon netting, was another crow, desperately trying to figure out how it could escape. Not really sure how it had got itself through the pigeon netting in the first place.
I went out and sliced a hole through the netting and the trapped crow quickly joined its mate outside, who finally stopped screaming bloody murder. To this day it still amazes me that the crow's mate, knew which apartment I lived in and spotted me downstairs.
[+] [-] bdamm|4 years ago|reply
Maybe it was just me, but for months I could have sworn there were crows out sounding the alarm whenever I left my apartment.
Bears are another animal that seem to recognize individuals and take offences personally.
[+] [-] whatrocks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffreire|4 years ago|reply
Assuming you mean it's difficult to tell the difference, as opposed to just in this case:
Telling them apart is fairly straightforward! Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically flap quite a bit during flight. Ravens, by comparison, are much larger in size, have a diamond-shaped tail that moves quite a bit during flight, and typically glide during flight.
Love the whole family of corvids :D as well as your story!
[+] [-] jbattle|4 years ago|reply
I'm just saying - keep an eye out for witches ;)
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|4 years ago|reply
Reminds me of a short story I wrote which is a transcription of a vivid dream I had: http://www.tlalexander.com/spooks/
[+] [-] dontbeevil1992|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zehauser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiggyJohnson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0
[+] [-] klenwell|4 years ago|reply
[oregon] I accidentally created an army of crow body guards. Am I liable if my murder attempts murder? UPDATE: The crows saved a life
https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/lobhtj/oregon_...
I also read a comment online somewhere (maybe here?) recently where someone talked about a crow they met years ago while in college at the local Taco Bell who would exchange nickels for tacos. I believe they said that crow would even croak "TACO" when it presented the nickel.
Now I wish I would have bookmarked that one.
[UPDATE] I tracked down the Taco Bell story:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/572ajt/whats_the...
This comment is 5 years old so I think I read a copypasta version of this. Or maybe author reposted it somewhere more recently. Anyway, great story.
[+] [-] cpeterso|4 years ago|reply
https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...
[+] [-] robbedpeter|4 years ago|reply
Good for them, the more conscious creatures we share the universe with, the better. Well, the planet, anyway. While we're nominally in charge. If we can avoid screwing everything up too badly.
Actually, hell, can the ravens take over? We seem to be bodging things up just a bit.
[+] [-] reducesuffering|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TallonRain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|4 years ago|reply
Another point is, other animals do dumb things - like videos of ducks walking over drains and the ducklings fall down the drain, or creature stuck in plastic sheet until it dies. Or creature does nothing while humans approach, kill, and eat it. It's hard to see examples like that and think "deep intelligence".
Emotions, yes - a lot of fear, pain, excitement, skittishness, visible in a lot of animal behviours. But examples of planning ahead, cooperation, tool using, they're so rare they make headlines like this article when observed.
[+] [-] kyaghmour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegaworks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meristohm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paskozdilar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tigen|4 years ago|reply
Heck, not long ago you'd find a lot of humans saying this about other humans.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|4 years ago|reply
"[Researcher] Nieder kept varying the “rule,” with the birds told which color meant what — red = saw it, or blue = saw it — only after the flash. That required the crows, Glenn and Ozzy, to keep monitoring their brains; they had a second or two to figure out what they had seen and tell Nieder by choosing the corresponding target.
While the crows were solving these tasks, the researchers were tracking the activity of hundreds of their neurons. (Crows’ brains have 1.5 billion neurons, as many as some monkey species.)
"When the crows reported having seen a faint light, sensory neurons were active between the flash and the birds pecking the color that meant, yes, I saw that. If the crows did not perceive the very same faint stimulus, the nerve cells remained silent, and the bird pecked, no, I didn’t see anything. Ozzy and Glenn’s brain activity systematically changed depending on whether or not they had perceived the dim flash.
"During the delay, many neurons responded according to the crows’ impending report, rather than to the brightness of the light... The birds were aware of what they subjectively perceived, flash or no flash, correctly reporting what their sensory neurons recorded..."
[+] [-] khaledh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] openfuture|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2000UltraDeluxe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _dain_|4 years ago|reply
... I don't actually understand what this means. Am I dumb or is this just badly written? Can someone explain? What is Nieder actually doing here, and how does it test whether the crows are introspecting? How are they "told" which color meant what?
[+] [-] netsharc|4 years ago|reply
If there was a faint light, and the red target appears, the birds were taught (how?) to peck it. If there was light and a blue target appears, don't peck it. If there was no light, and the blue target appears, peck it, and if the target is red, don't peck it.
So peck a red target = "I saw a light", peck a blue target = "I didn't see a light". If the opposite color target appears to what you need to peck, don't peck it.
Or: Target is red, did I see a light? If yes, peck it. Target is blue. Was there a light? If there wasn't, peck it.
I didn't continue reading the paper, but I guess the researchers concluded since they crows could answer the "Did I see a light?" question correctly most (i.e. statistically significant amount) of the times, it shows they can ponder the contents of their brains.
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|4 years ago|reply
This research has important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of higher intelligence. First, a cerebral cortex is not needed, and there are other anatomical means to achieve the same outcome. Second, either the evolution of consciousness is very ancient, tracing back to the last common ancestor of mammals and birds about 320 million years ago, or, equally intriguing, consciousness arose at least twice later on, independently in mammals and birds. Both options raise the likelihood, in my view, that higher intelligence on other planets may not necessarily be mammal or human-like, but could very well be birdlike.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/crows-are-...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] harel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jallbrit|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bee_rider|4 years ago|reply
And I wonder if the animals that we run these intelligence tests on know the humans are behind the tests. Maybe if crows achieve a culture with legends and stories, they'll have the a trickster god -- white coat, glasses man. For lab rats I guess white coat glasses man would take a more malicious aspect.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Razengan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|4 years ago|reply
we are "herd" enough that the benefits of learning from others overcomes the need to be smart enough to work it out yourself.
But individualistic enough that we won't follow the herd all the time (we might want to improve that given the success of religion and dictators).
But what I am trying to say is that intelligence is a necessary but not sufficbet condition. We also need ... politics ... for want of a better word.
Our brains seem to be wired as levels of co-operating systems coming to collective decisions - and that is a pretty good way to describe politics and society.
Human species is less a collection of organisms feeding and dying and more a distributed brain, trying to wake up.
Now that each node has a pocket sized way to communicate with each other node, I wonder what the conditions for consciousness really are?
[+] [-] winnit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] peter303|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamontcg|4 years ago|reply
I could walk out on the porch and get within a foot or two of it without it flying away.
I hadn't been feeding them or anything.
I put out some water and ran the garden hose a bit and put out a bit of bread thinking that food or water was probably what it was looking for (it was during some very hot days in Seattle). It didn't really act all that interested in what I did though.
[+] [-] jrapdx3|4 years ago|reply
Curiously crows (abundant around here too) have displayed little interest in the peanuts on offer. OTOH there have been "wars" between the crows and jays, not sure what "issues" precipitated highly vocal confrontations. I assume it was territorial. Significantly there was never any evidence of killed or wounded black or blue participants.
Strikes me as sad and shameful that these corvid cousins know more about resolving differences than we humans ever seem to learn.
[+] [-] tombert|4 years ago|reply
Makes me feel bad for using the insult "bird brain" in the past.
[+] [-] mitch3x3|4 years ago|reply
One morning they flew above us with a rotting sausage and dropped it right in front of my dog and waited for him to eat it. I had to pull it out of his mouth and when I looked up the ravens were all watching us.
I can’t say for sure, but it certainly felt like revenge.
[+] [-] markdown|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmje|4 years ago|reply
I posted it to Reddit at the time and got a bunch of suggestions ranging from "it's dead" to "crows love to play tricks". I never got to the bottom of what was going on.
[+] [-] cmpb|4 years ago|reply
I find myself wondering more and more if we are more similar than I give animals credit for.