Science Can Neither Explain Nor Deny the Awesomeness of This Sledding Crow
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/science-can-neither-explain-nor-deny-the-awesomeness-of-this-sledding-crow/251395/Before we talk, you need to watch the video above. It's just one minute and 24 seconds. You'll observe a crow (probably a 'hooded crow') pick up the lid to a jar, set it down on the apex of a snow-mottled roof and slide down one side, carefully keeping its feet on the lid until it gets to the bottom. Then it picks up the lid, flies back to the apex, tests out another face of the roof, finds it lacking, returns to the original position, and slides down again.
It is a remarkable demonstration of the intelligence of the crow, which sits on a smart branch in the animal tree within the family Corvidae. There is something so deliberate about this play: the crow uses a toy; it searches for the best sledding path; it repeats the adventure down the roof; it keeps upright with its feet planted on the lid when, as a bird, it could simply fly. The bird does not want to travel down the roof, it wants to slide down the roof.
I wanted to know if there was a greater significance to this video and this amazing bird. So, I called up Alan Kamil, who has been studying corvids for decades and is co-director of the Center for Avian Intelligence at the University of Nebraska. I've got to send you this YouTube clip of this crow sledding down a roof in Russia, I told him.
Across the phone line, I heard Kamil gamely open his email and begin to watch the video. Like most people who watch the video, he chuckled and said, "Wow, this is cool," a proposition to which I assented.
*** GASP -- animals can have FUN -- and they can even invent ways to have fun. who'd a thunk?
Turn CO Blue
(4,221 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)stockholmer
(3,751 posts)The Atlantic, btw, should be required reading for all US high school and university students, it is a superb magazine.
applegrove
(118,778 posts)Robb
(39,665 posts)It will knock your socks off. They use meta-tools. Tools to get tools to get food.
Nature = awesome.
Still Blue in PDX
(1,999 posts)Crows are indeed scary smart.
tularetom
(23,664 posts)and the crows pick up nuts that fall on the ground and fly over our driveway where they drop them on the asphalt to crack them open. If it doesn't crack the first time they swoop down and pick it up and drop it until it opens up.
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)an intersection waiting for the light to turn green. The crow then hopped over to streetcar tracks an placed a nut it was holding in its beak on the tracks, the crow then hopped back to the curb unperturbed by the people around him. He hopped back to the track once a street car ran over hte nut and cracked the shell!
wakemewhenitsover
(1,595 posts)Not the same video you saw, but still amazing...
Marnie
(844 posts)Warpy
(111,339 posts)always wanted to return as a river otter because they had so few predators and always looked like they were having so much fun sliding down falls, climbing up, and sliding down again.
Six months after she died, a group of river otters was spotted in the northern part of this state, first time since the early 1950s.
How weird is that?
But I digress, lots of animals seem to do things just for the fun of it. If you've ever owned a cat or dog, you already know this stuff. The crow is only different because he chose his own sled.
handmade34
(22,757 posts)reminds me... I so regret not having a video camera with me a few years ago... I was in Irving, TX at the California Crossing Park standing by the Trinity River. My partner and I watched as 3 turtles repeatedly climbed up a ledge (about 6 feet or so) and then one by one jumped into the river... then swam back to where they could easily climb the ledge and then all 3 one by one jumped into the river to swim back to the place where they could easily climb the ledge... my partner was with me and we still talk in amazement about it to this day animals are so incredibly awesome sometimes... or for want of a camera
at a spot much like this...
90-percent
(6,829 posts)This has beer commercial written all over it.
My late father used to tell me how smart crows are. Ever notice how they don't get off the road unless they have to. They're starting to deal with traffic like New York City people!
-90% Jimmy
Marnie
(844 posts)One of the things they mentioned was a problem that the crows were causing in Moscow becasue they were sliding down the gold leaf coated onion domed buildings on their bums and rubbing the gold leaf off.
Apparently the crows just found it fun.
stevedeshazer
(21,653 posts)BrendaBrick
(1,296 posts)especially the part on making a hook!
shraby
(21,946 posts)too dry or hard, brought it over to the rain trough on the side of our shed that the birds use for baths and drinking and it dropped the food into the trough until it had softened, picked it out and flew off with it.
eShirl
(18,503 posts)was wondering how a cow could sled on a lid, then fly back up the hill...
progressoid
(49,999 posts)Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)PB
FLyellowdog
(4,276 posts)He slides, and rolls around, and goes back to the top of the hill to do it again. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself...no encouragement or human intervention or anything. So cool.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)They will pull the wiper blades off your car, fly in groups and heckle bald eagles.
I saw one work and work on a closed bottle of pop he had found until I took it and gave him my bag of lettuce from my grocieres.
I've seen them flying when its windy riding up up up and then just falling like a rock until another breeze takes them up. They love to play together flying like maniacs. I love crows and ravens.
AdHocSolver
(2,561 posts)This is because the learner is engaged and motivated.
Schooling in the U.S. crushes this motivation and is the reason our young people wind up so poorly educated.
No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top only exacerbate the problem of poor education because they are contrary to this fact of nature that we can see in animals.
dougolat
(716 posts)wakemewhenitsover
(1,595 posts)phylny
(8,386 posts)We had a fish named Rosie (because she was very tiny, maybe the size of a very small paper clip, and you could see her heart because she was almost translucent).
Rosie liked to "ride" the bubbler. She would swim over to the bubbles until she was whooshed up to the surface, swim down and do it again. She lived a long time, too.
Rhiannon12866
(206,016 posts)Dogs and cats play, so why wouldn't birds? But I have to admit, this one is mighty clever!
randr
(12,414 posts)Martin Eden
(12,875 posts)Hotler
(11,445 posts)I put peanuts in the shell out for them and they will swallow one or two long ways and then fuck around stacking three more in a pyramid and fly off.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)would come and get all the peanuts -- there would be a regular throw down between the squirrels and the crows -- but the crows were bigger and they could fly.
and what is with the stacking thing? they'll stack anything it seems like.
arikara
(5,562 posts)Mr would lay out a line of say 10 or so peanuts on the balcony rail and the squirrel would come up and touch each one with his nose then pick up a couple and take off to hide them. While he was gone, Mr would take one peanut away and when he came back the squirrel would do the nose touching thing again and go strange looking for the missing peanut even though there were seven more still laying there. It was hilarious.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)I don't know if they knew how many - but they knew where they were supposed to be!
DCBob
(24,689 posts)almost appears to have been trained but I think the bird just discovered it on its own.
Rhiannon12866
(206,016 posts)Positive reinforcement? It really is amazing and you can't help but smile...