Thread by @corvidresearch

Dovetailing off the #WowScienceFact hashtag I want to dedicate a whole thread to all the things I find most wow enducing about crows and ravens. Ready?

Did you know there are 44 different Corvus (crows, ravens and rooks) species? They’re found on every continent except Antarctica and South America. Some of them, like the ʻalalā are among the rarest animals on earth. corvidresearch.blog/2017/01/05/the…

Given their unique natural histories, different species excel at different things. New Caledonian crows live on an island absent of woodpeckers so they’ve learned to use tools to eat food normally accessed by woodpeckers. They make hooks and toothed spears.

Part of their tool making success stems from their excellent causal reasoning skills. Scientists (inc. @LoganCorina) looked deeper into this by doing a series of Aesop’s fable exprmts. In his story of the crow and the pitcher a crow used stones to raise the water level and drink.

Scientists tested how well crows could actually reason through the properties of water and other objects in order to obtain food.

In one experiment New Caledonian crows were able to correctly choose heavy vs. light objects to raise the water level in a tube.

In another they were able to correctly choose a tube with water vs. sand.

You can watch the whole series of experiments here:

Switching gears to common ravens we have a bird that is more reliant on finding carrion. To achieve this ravens have several cool features.

The first is that they often share information about food bonanzas at the roost. The dominant knowledgeable bird will indicate it knows where food is via social soaring displays and will then lead others there. (Photo by Jim Brandenburg)

The other is that they’re often stealing food from apex predators like wolves. In an effort to distract and sneak food (or maybe just show off) ravens and some crows are notorious tail pullers.

Seriously. They pull all the tails.

google.com/amp/corvidblog…

In fact ravens can steal so much food from wolves that some scientists have suggested the reason wolves often hunt in pack sizes larger than is most efficient, is because they need the extra bodies to protect kills. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

So rather than the very friendly relation between wolves and ravens that’s often depicted in feel good memes, their relationship is very one sided and largely unwelcomed by wolves.

My study species, the American crow, has many wow features including facial recognition (which is not unique among corvids or many other animals) funeral behaviors (my area of study) and my favorite, which does seem to be more unique, gift giving.

Many, many people have reported receiving gifts (rocks, pieces of metal, beads, bones, missing personal items, feathers, keys, toys, etc.) from crows they feed. The story of Gabi Mann is perhaps the most famous. bbc.com/news/magazine-…

We don’t know why they do this but I suspect it’s a behavior born out of error but that’s reinforced with food and so continues. Or maybe like food offered during courtship it’s an intentional olive branch of relationship building. 🤷‍♀️

I’ll finish things off with my favorite and most GIFable feature. Crows and ravens love to play. They’re among only 25 species of birds that have been documented to play. corvidresearch.blog/2015/03/16/cro…

There are 7 kinds of play including sliding/sledding

Object play (photo by Jens Buddrich)

And hanging

Crows and ravens are really amazing creatures (but hey, what animal isn’t when you look closer.) I hope I’ve imbued a sense of wow into your Friday. Follow me here or on IG @ swiftcrow to meet the recommended daily dose of corvid. Thanks for reading!