How Smart Are Crows? | ScienceTake | The New York Times

everyone knows crows are smart they recognize faces they can make and use tools but how smart and how do they learn that's where one of asap's fables comes in it's the one about a Thirsty Crow that dropped stones in a pitcher in order to raise the water level so it was high enough to get a drink seems unlikely but in fact experiments have shown that new Caledonian crows once they're trained to pick up and drop Stones which is not something they do a lot in the wild can figure out this problem pretty quickly they use the stones to raise the water level to get a piece of floating food some other kinds of birds can do this too and humans once they reach about age five in this latest set of experiments the crow showed some new tricks they picked out sinking over floating objects to raise the water level and solid over Hollow objects they didn't do well with wide versus narrow tubes and if part of the whole tube apparatus was hidden then they weren't able to figure it out so it seems that crows really need to see the cause and effect in order to understand the problem what's the moral of the story more research is needed of course in order to figure out exactly how crows learn and think [Music] [Music]

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 987,973

Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, crow, intelligence, science, scientist, bird, avian, face, tool, facial recognition, aesop, aesop's fables, fable, drink, stone, water, experiment, trick, behavior, tube, study, scientific, cause and effect, research, cute, animal, volume, learning, learning patters, spacial perception, hollow, solid, sink, float, liquid, displacement, cognition, spacial, biology, behavioral

Id: s2IBayVsbz8

Length: 1min 51sec (111 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 11 2014