A surprising observation I made a couple years ago is that of all the places I’ve traveled Crows have been everywhere but the Arctic. This includes 13,000 foot mountains down to sub-sea level Death Valley. Not only are Crows everywhere its easy to determine that they’re a thinking animal with problem solving skills. I’ve seen them wait out people to get their trash and I’ve seen Crows gang up on Red-Tail Hawks in my neighborhood. All of these memories and observations came to a head after viewing a very interesting TED presentation by Joshua Klein on The Amazing Intelligence of Crows. I highly recommend watching this 10 minute video. I guarantee you’ll never look at a Crow the same way and it might make you think twice about the intelligence of other species.
[tags]wildlife, video, TED, crow, Joshua Klein[/tags]
Interesting timing with this and the coyotes post. I recently attended a talk on urban wildlife by Jarrid Jenkins of the Stanley Park Ecology Society; crows and coyotes were the focus. Stanley Park takes up half of the downtown core here in Vancouver so it has a big impact on the animals we encounter in the city.
If you’re ever in Vancouver let me know, Stanley Park’s a great location.
Ashley
Thanks for sharing this Jim. I have often thought that animal intelligence isn’t really limited by the animal, but only our ability to understand it!
@Mark Glad you enjoyed this. Actually I’ve felt for sometime that our recognition of animal intelligence is really limited by our own arrogance rather than our ability to understand. For some reason humanity thinks a bit too high of itself in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. If we were a little more grounded I think most societies would have a greater appreciation for wildlife and their natural behavior.
All animals have their own level of “intelligence”, and for this post, you chose to emphasize that of the crows. I agree with you in saying that we as humans are arrogant in nature. We think we are always way beyond other living creatures. Truth is, sometimes, it’s this same arrogance that hinders us from understanding other animals.