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Comment by jcrites | Hacker News Reader

For those interested in animal intelligence, I recommend watching "A Murder of Crows", a short documentary about crow intelligence that's available free online. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/in...

Crows are one of the only other animals that can make and use tools. In fact, crows probably spend more time building their tools than any other animal than humans; they carefully clip the limbs from a tree branch, whittle it down, and fashion it into an effective hook. The documentary also shows some intelligence tests in which crows perform almost as well as human children.

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Corvids seem incredibly intelligent despite their tiny brains. I do not understand how they can tell one human from another, but they do. A rook makes her presence known to me unobtrusively every morning as I walk into work, and in return I leave some of my scone behind where she will find it. She is then joined by two other birds.

Minor commment, in that page they state that crows live everywhere except antartica.

But I've never seen one in south america (traveled a bit around there) and it looks like wikipedia haven't as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_(genus)

Good point. While the family Corvidae (Corvids, which includes Jays) is found in South America, the genus Corvus ("Crows") is absent there. So for PBS to be correct you have to read "Crows" as "the Crow family".

The Kea of New Zealand are similarly intelligent. Some of the stuff they can do is fascinating.

Obligatory David Attenborough documentary on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhzmULgoqI (the 'full' one has screwed-up framing)

I rescued a fledgling crow this year by getting him/her past a rough spot in the early days of independence. It made a complete mess of my office but it was one of the most rewarding things I did this year, incredible how smart that little bird was. Eventually it moved to the garden of a friend and from there joined regular crow life.

> Crows are one of the only other animals that can make and use tools

"Goodall observed other chimpanzees picking up leafy twigs, stripping off the leaves and using the stems to fish for insects. This change of a leafy twig into a tool was a major discovery. Prior to this, scientists thought that only humans manufactured and used tools, and that this ability was what separated humans from other animals.[19] In 1990, it was claimed the only primate to manufacture tools in the wild was the chimpanzee.[20] However, since then, several primates have been reported as tool makers in the wild"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals

https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffin...

http://www.wired.com/2011/08/dolphin-fishing/

yes, several examples besides crows, I just pointed one, not sure why I was downvoted

Here's a youtube of the same documentary (A Murder of Crows) for folks outside the US:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s472GjbLKQ4

Edit: anecdotally I've seen similar behavior and intelligence demonstrated by African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus)

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