Aesop's Fable - or fact? Meet the world's cleverest bird

They use tools a lot. They can be trained to operate vending machines to get food out by exchanging them for coins they find on the street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iihdP3b6LXw

They use cars to crack nuts and traffic lights to know when it is safe to go get the meat out of the nut: http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/09/video-crow-uses-oncoming-...

I think that a good portion of the population in cities around the world wants to cull the crows is a sad metaphor for the state of humanity. For a species that wants to find intelligence somewhere in the world, that wants to relate to and communicate with others to avoid loneliness to want to erradicate one of the few examples of great intelligence outside our own species is a metaphor for the erradication of intelligence within our own species as well. In times of war, philosophers are the first to be killed. Science is losing in our American class rooms. Teachers are paid a pittance while athletes are paid millions.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1337698/Plan-to-cull-...

This thread is interesting because these people want to cull the crows because they interfere with song birds: http://www.birding.bc.ca/community/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2... Another metaphor for our society more interested in pursuing entertainment in the form of sports or music or hollywood at the expense of engineering, science and math.

And others want to kill them because they wake them up! http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/story.html?id=7d72...

How poetic: ignorance is bliss.