Just seen a program where Ravens had worked out that walnuts dropped on the road would get opened by cars driving over them. Nothing so strange about that I hear you say. But they had also worked out that it was dangerous to retrieve them. So they now drop them on pedestrian crossings and wait for the lights to change before getting them I've had labourers that couldn't work something like that out.
I love tales like this one. Every time I hear or read of things like this, I think back to my school days when it was 'certain indisputable fact' that humans were the only species capable of abstract thought. Give it another 100 years, and scientists might actually concede that as far as species go, we're a bit fik really
I seen a program about 5- 10 years ago, where crows would drop nuts etc on a junction with traffic lights, then wait for the lights to change then they would go and get they treat There hope for man kind yet
I remember watching stray dogs use the crossing in London. That was back in the days when we actually had stray dogs just wandering the streets and nobody batted an eyelid.
I seem to remember seeing a programme about animal intelligence where a morsel of food was suspended on the end of a piece of string, which was attached to a horizontal wire. Rooks and Crows had worked out that by standing on the wire and hauling the string up bit by bit, whilst each time placing the string under their foot to hold it in place, the morsel could eventually be retrieved. Clever birds.
It was the Ravens that worked that one out ahead of the other Corvidae. The others may have learned it off them since. Magpies mourn their dead with offerings
