#corvid intelligence

There are more, but these are some of the best ones

It always amazes me how intelligent and human-like corvids can be. This cheeky little bugger was strutting around on our balcony, probably looking if he could snatch something from our trashcan ( which we keep outside to avoid getting fruitflies). As soon as I looked up from the stove and looked at him, he fluttered up and landed on the railing, trying to look as if he hadn't planned anything of the sort. As if he knew that trashcan diving is something humans don't approve of and that as soon as I saw him, I would be keeping an eye on him to ensure he wouldn't do it. Just like a little kid wanting to do something Mommy and Daddy forbade, but wanting to try it anyway until Mommy wised up.

Recursion is a key feature of language. It enables us to build elaborate sentences from simple ones. Take the sentence “The mouse the cat chased ran.” Here the clause “the cat chased” is enclosed within the clause “the mouse ran.” For decades, psychologists thought that recursion was a trait of humans alone. Some considered it the key feature that set human language apart from other forms of communication between animals. But questions about that assumption persisted. “There’s always been interest in whether or not nonhuman animals can also grasp recursive sequences,” says Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at the lab of Andreas Nieder, a professor of animal physiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

New Caledonian crows use tools to investigate unfamiliar and potentially dangerous objects, according to scientists.