One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something.
It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, a pretty sizable rock smacked the pavement next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. If it had hit my head I would have been hurt. I finally look up and see a big crow staring directly down at me - it had dropped it from the power lines, it had seemingly been intentional, maybe as a warning, I don't know. I attributed it to malice towards the vagrants that harass them.
I was amazed at how much intelligence it would take to 1) form a grudge 2) form intent to threaten/harm, 3) formulate a plan using a weapon with cause -> effect to execute intent, 4) wait for opportunity.
I have observed a lot of very intelligent behaviors from these birds but that was the wildest one. I have seen it happen once since, so I'm convinced it isn't an accident.
I remember reading an article in National Geographic of how crow's brains are much more interconnected than is the norm in mammals, i.e. IIRC they have a higher density of synapses between neurons. From that article, it seems that the usual brain weight vs. body weight to determine intelligence, which seems can be used to approximate intelligence in different species of mammals, cannot be used for birds (or at least crows, which the article was focusing on).
In other words, they seem to achieve better results with smaller brains than we thought. And yes, crows (in EU) do exhibit some pretty intelligent behavior.
Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat) has me shown there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way).
Birds have higher neural density than mammals (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) so can pack a lot into their tiny heads. I do wonder what they'd have to say, if given the chance.
It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, a pretty sizable rock smacked the pavement next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. If it had hit my head I would have been hurt. I finally look up and see a big crow staring directly down at me - it had dropped it from the power lines, it had seemingly been intentional, maybe as a warning, I don't know. I attributed it to malice towards the vagrants that harass them.
I was amazed at how much intelligence it would take to 1) form a grudge 2) form intent to threaten/harm, 3) formulate a plan using a weapon with cause -> effect to execute intent, 4) wait for opportunity.
I have observed a lot of very intelligent behaviors from these birds but that was the wildest one. I have seen it happen once since, so I'm convinced it isn't an accident.
In other words, they seem to achieve better results with smaller brains than we thought. And yes, crows (in EU) do exhibit some pretty intelligent behavior.
https://www.aaas.org/membership/member-spotlight/scientist-j...
I wonder if this was an elder crow whose eyesight has decreased with age and gave out the wrong descriptions to their friends. :D
Birds have higher neural density than mammals (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) so can pack a lot into their tiny heads. I do wonder what they'd have to say, if given the chance.