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Polioliolio

Member
Nov 6, 2017
5,396
Humans look down on other animals' intelligence because they don't see them using smart phones, factory farming, or destroying the earth. But for most of human history, we didn't have modern civilization.

If you gave other animals the luxury of relatively assured day to day survival, who knows how they might adapt and develop.
 

KingWillance

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,374
4r5ZTiH.jpg
D E E P S T A T E
 

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,962
This guy created a vending machine for crows to help out gardeners and farmers instead of just killing them. They are very adaptive, especially in a human environment. Crows have big brains and are proportionate to the chimpanzee brain.
 

teruterubozu

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,843
Most of my experiences with crows are watching them eat garbage in Tokyo and cawing super loud. Is it just me, or are the ones in Tokyo abnormally large? Saw them all the time, but I actually really like them. Very pretty birds.

Yeah the crows in Japan are ridiculously huge. They're beasts and super loud!!
 

Jumpman64

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
550
Yeah crows are highly intelligent and you can train one to speak just like a parrot.

Considered the smartest bird in the world "it's a certain type of crow, but even the random one in your neighborhood have the ability to learn how to speak, problem solve, and count
 

Shodan14

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,410
Yeah, crows are cool. They will carry out revenge and pre-emptive attacks on larger birds of prey.

It is a bit weird that their intelligence seems like a recent discovery. They've been around as long as we have.
 

More_Badass

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,622
So when we eventually get around to uplifting: crows, dolphins, or chimps?

Edit: actually, are there any sci-fi stories with uplifted or evolved corvids?
 

More_Badass

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,622
Crows also understand analogies and relationships between items
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crows-understand-analogies/
Then, the critical test was given. Each card now pictured a pair of items. The middle card would display pairs AA or CD, and the two side cards would display pair BB and pair EF. The relation between one pair of items must be appreciated and then applied to a new pair of items to generate the correct answer: the BB card in the case of AA or the EF card in the case of CD. For instance, if the middle card displayed a circle and a cross, then the correct choice would be the side card containing a square and a triangle rather than the side card containing two squares.

Not only could the crows correctly perform this task, but they did so spontaneously, from the very first presentations, without ever being trained to do so.
 

chrisPjelly

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
10,491
Crows are cute and great! I have no idea why they suddenly became the symbol of gothic aesthetic and edginess
 

Aurica

音楽オタク - Comics Council 2020
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
23,474
A mountain in the US
speaking of crows in tokyo, do they sound different to crows from other regions.
When we were in Tokyo a few years ago, my fiance was convinced they sounded different to the ones back home (Australia).
I thought she was crazy
The first day that I moved to Shinjuku, my roommate and I could've sworn there was a weird man imitating crows, because one sounded so human. When we realized it was a real crow, we started calling them "Tokyo man crows."
Crows are cute and great! I have no idea why they suddenly became the symbol of gothic aesthetic and edginess
Because they've been used to symbolize death in literature for a very long time.
Japanese crows are indeed huge.

They also seem able to understand traffic lights, making use of them to get nuts safely.


No idea if it's illegal to own a crow, but theyabsolutely do recognize human faces.
That crow walking across the crosswalk is so cute. Awesome birds. That article was interesting, too. I won't make enemies with crows.
 

Dekuman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,026
We have a huge crow problem near my place of work. They shit all over the sidewalk and stink up entire blocks at a time. They need to invent sanitation before i treat them as equals.
 
Oct 25, 2017
12,457
One of my resolutions for this year is to befriend a crow or a raven

Like legit, I want one to walk up to me and pet me, otherwise 2018 will make me sad
Lol. My fiancée tried that. She would feed them every day. Eventually they started sitting right at our window making loud noises waking us up early in the morning.
 

Slime

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,970
They're pretty cool, but my main experience with them involved my dad getting divebombed by a bunch of them when he tried to free one from our hockey net.
 

Dalek

Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,900
Crows are amazing. They're very smart, but they can also be massive assholes. They do this thing where they tug on the tails of other animals who are having food (usually birds of prey who are much bigger than the crow), and when the animal turns around to look, the crow snatches the food away. However, sometimes they just do it for shits and giggles.
There's also this phenomenon of them climbing on top of other, bigger birds, to the point of literally riding them, just for the sake of being a dick:
4r5ZTiH.jpg


Super ballsy lol

I love this photo. Crow took an Uber.
 

Stencil

Member
Oct 30, 2017
10,371
USA
Crows are amazing. Though the claim that they have "near-human intelligence" seems a little unfounded. I'd love to be proven wrong, however.

The crows in Japan seem a lot different than the crows in Minnesota. edit: okay reading through the topic it seems I'm not alone in noticing this.

Also, has this been posted?
http://i./i/pix/2017/05/01/17/3FD036A400000578-4463150-image-m-48_1493657730322.jpg
 
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ned_ballad

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
48,218
Rochester, New York
I think that's a gross overstatement. Intelligent compared to most animals? Yes. Near human intelligence? Nah.
Depends on what you consider "human." And adult human? No.

But large parrots have roughly the intelligence of a toddler. Corvids are arguably more intelligent than even the most intelligent parrots, meaning they're probably right around toddler intelligence as well.

So in a way, they're near human intelligence. Just... baby humans.

I would love a Crow / Jackdaw / magpie as a pet.

Has anyone here on ERA had them, how was it?
There's a bird store by me that has two for "sale" although they've been there for years and I'm pretty sure the store does extremely thorough checking to ensure they'll be happy.

They require near constant mental stimulation and are not easy to care for at all. It's possible, but they need a ton of room, a lot of attention, a lot of toys, new puzzles every day to solve.

In the US you also can only keep non-native birds. The store by me has the African Pied, like the one in that video posted.
 

BLLYjoe25

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,969
still only birds. they are nowhere near us. maybe they are intelligent but they are just like dolphins.
 

Sephzilla

Herald of Stoptimus Crime
Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,493
Aren't crows also known to mourn losses and investigate how another crow died?
 

Aaronrules380

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
22,427
I mean if we take the smartest crow vs the dumbest human, I think the Crow's odds are probably pretty good in a contest of wits lol
 

Sesha

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,808
Crows also teach one another, so say if one human treats them poorly, before long, every crow in the area will be vary of that human.

Yeah, crows are cool. They will carry out revenge and pre-emptive attacks on larger birds of prey.

It is a bit weird that their intelligence seems like a recent discovery. They've been around as long as we have.

People have been aware of crows being smart for ages. It's just within the last few decades we've actually tried to figure out how smart they are.

Aren't crows also known to mourn losses and investigate how another crow died?

Yes.
 

Aaronrules380

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
22,427
Crows are probably the smartest non-primate animals on the planet.
Honestly intelligence can manifest in a number of different ways and because our methods of testing it in animals are limited and some methods can't be used for certain species but can for others, as well as the fact that people are probably only going to be an expert on one animal or animal family means that giving an absolute comparison on intelligence between two types of animals that are both clearly a cut above the norm can be difficult. If you look up a list of the most intelligent animals, you'll typically find the same general group, but the order in which they're placed tends to be fairly dynamic for most of the animals with a few exceptions (Chimps and Dolphins are usually always at the very top). Some species are also just more well studied in this regard than others too
 

Lorcain

Member
Oct 27, 2017
509
Crows are amazing. They're very smart, but they can also be massive assholes. They do this thing where they tug on the tails of other animals who are having food (usually birds of prey who are much bigger than the crow), and when the animal turns around to look, the crow snatches the food away. However, sometimes they just do it for shits and giggles.
There's also this phenomenon of them climbing on top of other, bigger birds, to the point of literally riding them, just for the sake of being a dick:
4r5ZTiH.jpg


Super ballsy lol
He unlocked his eagle mount. That's so f'ng cool. He's like a character in Lord of the Rings flying on the back of his giant eagle.
 

E_i

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,150
Birds also known to hold funerals, or gatherings around a dead bird that resemble a funeral.
 

Musubi

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
23,611
Great thread. Crows are pretty cool. Also a group of crows being called a "murder" is fucking bad ass.