Scientists have been studying New Caledonian crows by looking at how the behave in the wild as they were already known for their use of tools. The scientists put cameras on the birds tails to see what goes on in their lives on a day to day basis and found that they were even more intelligent than first thought.

They use their bills to make tools that they can use to grab bugs with, and seem to be almost as advanced in their tool use as primates.

The cameras used were only recently developed because of advances in mobile phone technology.

You can read more about it on the BBC website. There are some good video clips too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7027923.stm

Yes I've heard crows are clever before. The video clips were really interesting to watch, thanks for letting us know! Are ravens close relatives, because to me they look similar and are meant to be very intelligent too.

Ravens are very close relatives, and are actually considered to be the most intelligent of all the corvids (the crow family). I just read the local twitcher's webpage (tweeters), and it seems that the local ravens are adapting to human presence. They have been seen in suburban settings here, whereas 15 to 20 years ago they would have been found only in remote forested areas.

Kingfisher

Interesting to know. The corvids I know of certainly seem very bold so it's not surprising they have adapted to human presence.
I can remember visiting a bird sanctuary once, where they had trained a raven to say some words but before I had thought only parrots and relatives could do this.

I find it amazing that any sort of bird has learnt how to fashion and use even basic tools. I suppose that the knowledge of how to do it has been passed don through the generations for thousands of years, which akes it vb more fascinating.

I envy the people who get to perform research like this as a job.

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

From Edgar Allen Poe's poem of 1845, The Raven

Kingfisher

This post was last modified: 08-10-2007 08:17 PM by Kingfisher.

Yeah, I saw a raven fly past my school the other day, right through the playground.

Anyway, that picture is a Raven, isn't it? The beak is black.