New Caledonian crows are some of the cleverest birds — they can plan several steps ahead while using tools to get food out of a series of puzzle boxes
The team had 11 wild New Caledonian crows take this test – after 20 trials, four crows were successful 80 percent of the time, and the rest of the birds took 40 trials or more to reach that success rate.
It’s a bit like a game of chess – you may be familiar with the pieces and the board, but you still have to plan a strategy a few moves ahead. “The animals have to know the rules here, where is that second tool, where is the piece of food,” says [Sarah Jelbert at the University of Cambridge]. Performing several steps while they can’t see the entire puzzle shows that they can hold the space in their memory think through how to interact with it.
