Yeap. Food and valuables have to be toddler-proofed around crows. They can also steal your wallet or your keys if you leave them unsecured.
And, damn, they're as good as human thieves at reading situations for opportunism.
And, damn, they're as good as human thieves at reading situations for opportunism.
I realized that they are probably aware of my lack of attention to my food and that their in-built modeling of other agents had given them an advantage in this situation. I thought it was pretty impressive.
It was a big parking lot outside the gift shop, and some visitor had parked his motorcycle there. Pannier bags on the back.
The raven was sitting on one bag, actively working the zipper open. About a foot of zipper.
Which is pretty impressive, but the more impressive thing was how.
It would worry it for a couple seconds, tugging it a bit farther open, then stop, lift its head, and evaluate its surroundings.
If it didn't see anyone nearby, again with the zipper.
... I gained a new level of respect for corvids that day.
Two of them held the "flap" open, and the third went in for fries. Once they'd made a decent pile on the ground outside the can, they all set in to feast.
Why do programmers talk about living beings in software terminology, it's so clinical and cold. Other species are sentient beings, but for many it helps combat cognitive bias by not thinking of them as such.
Its actually true they do this. Two noted ornithologist's describes it in one of their books on crows:
As ornithologist John M. Marzluff and author Tony Angell noted in their 2005 book In the Company of Crows and Ravens, the calls these birds use "vary regionally, like human dialects that can vary from valley to valley." And there's more: If a crow changes its social group, the bird will try to fit in by talking like the popular guys. "When crows join a new flock," Marzluff and Angell wrote, "they learn the flock's dialect by mimicking the calls of dominant flock members."
Also, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think they would learn to insert a credit card into the machine given that they're good at manipulating sticks and stones and putting them into places.