Crows can recognize geometric regularity
22 comments
·April 17, 2025djmips
colkassad
I love crows so much. I had some in my backyard that I would give stuff too a lot. When I would leave in the morning for work, they would perch on my gutters and make clucking sounds while looking down at me. I'd wave and be on my way.
brewtide
We have been very welcoming to the crows in our backyard and they now hang out with the chickens and ducks when they get leftovers / table scrapes.
Now they are arriving slightly before the hawks and other predators and scaring them off.
If you see crows randomly arrive, and look around, there is almost always a circling bird in the sky.
It's super cool.
djmips
I made a terrible video of the event.
worldsayshi
How comparable is the intelligence of crows, dolphins, octopi and non human apes? Somewhat or not at all? There seem to be a host of things that each of those can do. Can apes do all of those things and the other groups just a few things each? Is there a huge leap of separation or does the leap come between us and them? Is it in any way quantifiable?
kirubakaran
Humans have so far failed all the tests that crows set up to measure their intelligence
colkassad
I was watching some crows eat some food in a parking lot yesterday. The first one landed next to a tiny morsel, investigated it a bit, then did a head bob thing while looking up and making what sounded like a cross between a hoot and a caw. Another crow swooped in about ten seconds later and they poked at it a bit. Then a lady walked over towards them, they flew away, and she dumped out her half eaten to-go meal in the parking spot. Too easy.
ninetyninenine
A lot of it comes from communication. We don't know how intelligent some of these things are simply because we can't communicate with them.
For apes and gorillas we can communicate. We've taught them sign language so we know hands down in terms of language we beat them. But for dolphins and octopi, we just don't really know.
smcl
We have not taught apes sign language. They can learn and form crude signs and use them to respond to stimuli or for rewards (wanting an orange, for example) but they’re not meaningfully communicating. It’d be like me claiming I taught my dog English because he can press the little button that plays a sound of me saying “biscuit!” when he wants a treat (which you have to take away from him because he will just mash it, since dogs want dog biscuits).
Loughla
Isn't that what communication is?
alexfromapex
They are also great at recognizing when I’m trying to plant grass seed in my lawn
almosthere
They can identify a worm from 300 feet, why would they not be able to do that.
cdplayer96
What's the legality on training an army of crows to collect loose change around the city for me?
MisterTea
Define "loose".
Edit, to add: years ago a lot of people kept pigeons in rooftop coops around NYC. As a kid there was an older guy near by who you'd see on his roof waving around a cloth that sort of directed the birds as they flew in a big flock. Now I'm imagining that but a flock of crows bringing back loot to some gangster on a rooftop.
1337biz
Went down that rabbit hole of training crows to do things. Crows are such amazingly intelligent creatures. There is a whole scene of people teaching and training wild crows silly things.
neom
It's always me coming into these comment sections on animal intelligence posting shadow the rat videos, well, I love rats sooo much, so here I am again. They're really wonderful pets who are clearly very loving and extremely intelligent. Cannot recommend them enough, they're fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
crooked-v
It's interesting to think about how past a certain level of intelligence and independence it becomes less "training" and more "teaching".
user982
I had to stop feeding the local crows. I thought I'd been training them to come when I called, but realized that they had started training me to come out by pecking my roof.
wglb
Science Advances paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt3718
null
Kind of off topic but I just got back from the park and there is a public water bowl set out for dogs and a crow was manipulating something in the water - after a time my eyebrows went up as I realized the crow was softening some dried out discarded human food to make it easy to break up and eat!