NationStates Jolt Archive

Found this on Witchvox. Thought y'all might be interested...

Linky! (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,476266,00.html)

I always knew ravens were smart, but this boggles the mind!

One of the trickiest challenges consists in making the raven sit on a bar with a piece of meat suspended vertically below it by a long string. What can the raven do to get at the dangling meal? There is only one solution: The raven has to use its beak to carefully pull the string a short way up. It then has to shape the string into a loop and place one talon on that loop. Then it has to pull the string up a little further and repeat the process. Done properly, the procedure allows the raven to gradually move the meat upward.

Too much trouble for a bird? The smartest ravens examined in Grünau patiently considered the challenge and then pulled the meat up. They discovered the right procedure right away. It seems they mentally rehearsed the problem before getting started.

Okay, that was an interesting read. The part about young ravens habitually annoying predators to gauge their reflexes and intelligence was kinda funky.

Interesting. I especially liked these two paragraphs:

Ravens especially like working with wolves. Sometimes they'll croak loudly to direct a pack of wolves to weak game they couldn't themselves attack. Researches who have examined this kind of cooperation even suspect wolves are driven to hunt in packs mainly because of the ravens. The predators are good sprinters and could theoretically slay game the size of deer alone or in pairs. But they would harldy get any meat for themselves during the feast that follows the slaying, due to the superior

The birds are highly sophisticated when it comes to assessing their adversary's degree of knowledge and considering it for the purpose of their deeds and misdeeds. They won't attribute much brainpower to a wolf, for example. "When ravens discover a wolf burying a piece of meat, they watch him openly, "Bugnyar reports. "And when he leaves, they just dig it up." But when it comes to their conspecifics, who are prepared for such tricks, they act demonstratively uninvolved, grooming their feathers and stilting about as if bored.

That's pretty impressive.

I wants one! Imagine the havoc you could cause with a trained Raven. Hells - 100 trained Ravens! *plots*

I wants one! Imagine the havoc you could cause with a trained Raven. Hells - 100 trained Ravens! *plots*

They'd rise up and defeat you. Then maybe take over the world...

Pretty cool article, thanks.

Found this on Witchvox. Thought y'all might be interested...

Linky! (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,476266,00.html)

I always knew ravens were smart, but this boggles the mind!



I saw this on a nature program a year ago- it is incredible how intelligent they seem.

I have a paid that live in a high pine tree outside and feed them meat scraps and bones.