Clever corvids

Stop what you’re doing and learn about how clever corvids are. There is a lot of footage of them creating grub-digging sticks to quite exacting specifications. It’s quite incredible, but there you are.

True Facts: Crows That Hunt With Sticks by Ze Frank (YouTube)

“Anyway, science hippies put a camera on the crow’s tail feathers…”

The crows are capable of solving multi-step problems. There are several tubes arrayed around the crow. One of the tubes has food in it, but cannot be reached with the small stick that the crow is given. There is a slightly longer stick in one tube, but it’s also not long enough to reach the food. It is, however, long enough to reach an even-longer stick that is able to reach the food. There is no way to solve the puzzle without using the short stick to get the medium stick and then using the medium stick to get the long stick and then to finally reach the food.

“When she’s trying to figure out how she got into this escape room/restaurant.”

The crow “Pierre” cheats, but he’s “got some pluck.” He tries with the short stick, then flies away to find a longer stick somewhere else, digging out the food with that instead of messing with all of the tubes.