This Amazing Video Reveals How Smart Crows Really Are

Business Insider - Crows can solve some puzzles just about as well as 5 to 7-year-old children, found a Mar. 26 study in PLOS ONE that tested what researchers call the "Aesop's Fable Paradigm."

In the ancient Greek tale "The Crow and the Pitcher," a parched crow came upon a water pitcher that was partially full, but couldn't fit its beak far enough inside to reach the water. So the crow gathered pebbles and dropped them into the pitcher, raising the water level so it could quench its thirst — and showing an impressive understanding of the cause and effect of water displacement in the process.

Apparently, this wasn't too far fetched.

Crows, rooks, and jays, or Corvidae, top the avian I.Q. scale (sorry, owls); and studies have previously shown that they can indeed learn to raise the water level in a glass in order to snack on a floating worm.

A group of researchers decided to test the extent of these cognitive abilities by studying a clever species of crow native to the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

They wanted to see whether the crows could understand causal relationships — namely, the idea that if you drop objects in water, it raises the level of the water — and to compare the crows' results to those of children who had previously figured out similar puzzles.

So they caught six birds and devised six experiments, three of which had previously been done by children. Each task involved trying to raise the water level in a tube enough that the crow could grab the reward of a small scrap of meat tied to a cork.

As crows don't generally drop rocks in the wild — thankfully for the rest of us — the researchers trained them to pick up rocks and drop them into tubes. This was to get the birds used to the idea of using rocks as a tool (these birds are known to make and use tools). When children did the same experiment in 2012, they received similar training. Though the kids had only 5 trials for each experiment, the crows got 20 chances to see if they could successfully learn to solve each task.

Watch!

Nat Geo: Live Eagle Webcam

Nat Geo - You're looking at a live webcam featuring a bald eagle nest in Washington, D.C. The nest is home to a bald eagle pair and their chicks, which hatched in March 2013. You'll see the adults bringing fish from the Anacostia River to feed their young. The two chicks are covered with black juvenile feathers—they won't sport their characteristic white heads until they are four or five years old.

About the Eagles

The nest featured here is about five feet wide and made mostly of sticks. It sits about 80 feet up in a tree on the grounds of the Metropolitan Police Academy. Installing the webcam, provided by National Geographic, was Chief of Police Cathy L. Lanier's idea. She has long been interested in the eagle pair that chose the academy grounds for its home. "It is fitting and exciting that our national bird has made a home on the Metropolitan Police Department's Academy grounds," said Lanier. "We look forward to viewing the eagles in their habitat."

The eagles are thought to be the same pair that has nested in the area for several years, says Craig Koppie, raptor biologist at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Chesapeake Bay field office in Annapolis, Maryland. Koppie is an advisor on the Earth Conservation Corps eagle restoration project, which also oversees a second bald eagle nest in Washington.

Bald eagle nests usually contain one to three dull-white eggs, and the parents take turns incubating them. Eggs hatch in about five weeks, and hatchlings are covered with soft, fluffy, light-gray feathers. “Generally the female stays on the nest while the father’s job is to bring in the food,” Koppie says. Food for this pair of eagles is generally fish—catfish, shad, or perch—plucked from the Anacostia.

Read More & Watch the Webcam!

How a Rooster Knows to Crow at Dawn - The animals know when it's daybreak even in a darkened room

Nat Geo - Back before alarm clocks jolted us awake to greet the morning with bleary-eyed confusion, roosters performed that daily duty. Now, a new study shows that roosters don't need the light of a new day to know when it's dawn—rather, their internal clocks alert them to the time. 

While researchers at Nagoya University in Japan were studying the genetic underpinnings of innate vocalizations—or nonlearned behaviors such as crowing—in chickens, they discovered that the male birds don't need external light cues to know when to start crowing. (Also see "Night Owls Stay Alert Longer Than Early Birds.")

"To our surprise, nobody [has] demonstrated the involvement of the biological clock in this well-known phenomenon experimentally," study co-author Takashi Yoshimura, who specializes in biological clocks at Nagoya University, said in an email.

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(VIDEO) Birds of Prey: Northwest Eagles

Ravens Remember and Greet You Accordingly

Discovery News - When you go outside, do the birdssound happy or angry when they see you? New research has found that at least one group of birds, ravens, remembers prior interactions with people and varies calls based on those earlier experiences.

So it’s not too far fetched to think that if you bothered a bird some time ago, the bird might unleash the avian version of swearing the next time you approach.

NEWS: Enormous Bird Lived Alongside Dinosaurs

The research, published in Current Biology, adds to the growing body of evidence that birds remember the appearance and voices of individuals, along with their prior encounters with them. Last year we told you how crows don’t forget faces, for example.

We take such skills for granted in humans. In daily life, it’s a given that we remember the faces and voices of multiple known individuals. Other studies show that different mammals can do the same thing.

If you want a lifelong buddy, you might consider getting a horse since they remember their human friends and act accordingly. We humans can be pretty nasty and complicated with each other at times, but give a horse a carrot and a head pat for a while and you’ll receive near-guaranteed kindness in return.             More