#bird intelligence

I humbly submit these crows that learned how to use this puzzle feeder even better than expected!  After some careful investigation they learned to roll the green ball so the food fell out the little holes… AND THEN THEY UNSCREWED THEY LID!!!  It was so delightful and I’ve never been so proud 😍😍😍

Ravens Are So Smart, One Hacked This Researcher's Experiment ▶▶ link to original article

a photo of a captive hawaiian crow using a stick as a tool to access food. crows are renowned for their intelligence and tool use, and have been known to create different tool shapes for different situations.

It is a tactic worthy of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt: wait until a beeping pedestrian crossing indicates a traffic queue has formed then use the line of cars as cover to reach your target. But this isn’t a scene from Mission: Impossible – it’s the behaviour of a young hawk. The discovery is not the first time birds have been found to make use of an urban environment. Crows, for example, are known to drop foods such as walnuts on to roads for cars to crush them open. However, the researcher behind a new study says it is the most advanced case so far of raptors making use of traffic patterns. “When I figured out what was going on, I was really impressed. I didn’t expect that,” said Vladimir Dinets, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee and author of the study. “On the other hand, every time I study some animal species it proves smarter than I expect.” Dinets made the discovery during the school run in West Orange, New Jersey, when he spotted a young Cooper’s hawk emerge from a tree near a road junction. The bird flew close to the pavement behind a queue of traffic that had stopped at a red light before crossing the road and taking a dive near one of the houses. After seeing the behaviour for a second time, Dinets realised the hawk was pouncing on a flock of birds that had gathered in front of a house where a family often ate dinner outdoors.