Bird Intelligence

Leslie

Leslie

Communistrator
Staff member
A CLEVER crow named Betty has amazed scientists by bending a straight wire into a hook and using it to scoop food from a container.

It is thought to be the first time any animal has made a tool for a specific purpose using material not found in the wild.

Although chimps, our closest cousins, use sticks as crude implements they always fail tool-making tasks in experiments.

The crow’s feat showed she is not so much a birdbrain as an egghead.

And Betty proved it was no fluke by making the hook nine times out of ten in tests carried out at Oxford University.

She did it in different ways, too. Sometimes she stood on the wire and pulled the tip over with her beak. Other times she stuck the wire into a crack and bent it.

Betty, a crow from the South Pacific, used the tool to spoon food from a vertical tube.

A research team led by Prof Alex Kacelnik stumbled on her ability by chance as they gave her and a male crow straight and bent wires to see which they would use.

The male pinched the bent one, leaving Betty to make her own. Prof Kacelnik told Science journal: “It was striking.”
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:eek: And to think I got creeped out by crows before I read that!
 
I just read that. Interesting, to say the least.

BTW...Before you get too 'creeped out', did you know that crows make good pets?
 
:eek: Oh gawd, ACK, I couldn't! I think they could easily turn into a phobia for me. :sick:
 
Leslie said:
:eek: Oh gawd, ACK, I couldn't! I think they could easily turn into a phobia for me. :sick:
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Just look at it this way...If you ever tire of your pet crow, you can always have him for a snack. Tastes just like chicken! :D :D :D
 
:lol:

I can just imagine that in a house, its beady little eyes, and beak, looking at me :eek:

*childhood chicken horrors coming back to haunt me*
 
I am halfway amazed though, about the tools bit, I didn't know they had it in them.
 
Leslie said:
I can just imagine that in a house, its beady little eyes, and beak, looking at me :eek:
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And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!

:eek13:
 
Ardsgaine said:
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!

:eek13:
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I can't get that 'Halloween' episode of the Simpson's out of my head... :D
 
:eek:

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Cool!

I confess, I like them. I like going out on a cold, still morning and hearing them cawing in the trees. I like seeing them standing on the side of the road in their black frock coats doing autopsies on the roadkill. I like seeing them clustered on the battlefield plucking the eyes out of the corpses... oops, sorry. That was a previous life. :p ;)
 
*runs away in horror*

When I was little I woudl not go outside if there was a crow outside. I woudl not even stand by the glass door if I coudl see one! :eek:
 
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