Smarter Than a First-Grader: Crows are More Intelligent Than Your Average Bird

Crows are some of the smartest birds around. They can learn how to use tools and can even be taught how to say simple words. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at how smart these birds actually are and have found that they just may be smarter than a four-year-old human.

The researchers captured crows in the wild and then brought them into aviaries where they lived for about five days. Keeping the crow families together, they housed the birds in separate areas of the aviaries for three to five months before releasing them back into the wild. The scientists then trained the birds to fly into the testing room when pointed to-a feat in and of itself.

The testing room contained an apparatus consisting of two beakers of water, the same height, but one wide and the other narrow. The diameters of the lids were adjusted to be the same on each beaker. In this case, the researchers wanted to see whether or not they could distinguish between water volumes.

"The question is, can they distinguish between water volumes?" asked Corina Logan, the lead researcher, in a news release. "Do they understand that dropping a stone in a narrow tube will raise the water level more?"

The researchers found that when the crows were given only four objects, they could only succeed in one tube-the narrower one. That's because the water level would never get hide in the wider tube. Surprisingly, the crows chose the right tube each time.

The scientists also looked at how crows reacted to the U-tube task. In this experiment, the crows had to choose between two sets of tubes. With one set, when the crows dropped a stone into a wide tube, the water level rose in the adjacent narrow tube that contained food. The other set of tubes had no connection. In addition, each set of tubes was marked with a distinct color cue.

Scientists found that this particular task was challenging for the corvids. Yet eventually one crow by the name of Kitty figured it out. In contrast, children between the ages of four to six were unable to work out the process.

"What we do know is that one crow behaved like the older children, which allows us to explore how they solve this task in future experiments," said Logan.

The findings reveal that crows are far smarter than researchers expected. In fact, they can problem solve on par with children. That said, scientists still need to conduct further research to test the limits of these corvids.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.