Crows are capable of working, sharing knowledge, and even mourning their deceased companions in a ceremonial manner. Recent research shows that the brains of crows are packed with neurons that aid in their intelligent thinking.
You may not know that crows are extremely intelligent. They can use tools to obtain what they want, such as how the New Caledonian crow on an island of the same name in the South Pacific knows how to shape twigs into hooks to catch insects from rotting logs. According to a new study, crows may even be smarter than we previously thought.
Crows and other bird species (in a family that includes crows and ravens) “know what they know and can reflect on ideas in their minds,” according to a 2020 study published in the journal Science. This is considered a foundation of self-awareness, shared by only a few animal species outside of humans, such as monkeys and great apes.
Crows are extremely intelligent.
Crows can also utilize their complex brains to devise creative solutions, such as dropping nuts onto the road so that passing cars can crack them open for them.
Crows Have Brains Packed with Neurons
The ability to thoughtfully ponder a problem and find solutions may be due to crows possessing a high number of neurons for processing information. This characteristic is not only found in humans but also in non-human primates.
They can learn to use tools and adapt to their environment.
A study published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology in January 2022 compared the brains of corvids with those of chickens, pigeons, and ostriches and found that corvid brains have denser neurons – between 200 to 300 million neurons per hemisphere – allowing for effective communication between brain cells.
The intelligence of crows is at least comparable to that of some monkey species and, in fact, may be closer to that of great apes (such as gorillas), according to a 2017 study published in the journal Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.
Surprisingly, They Can Even Reason
In the 2020 study, scientists had crows perform a series of puzzle-solving tasks. The researchers measured neural activity in various types of neurons with the aim of tracking how crows perceive and reason through their tasks.
They sought to study a specific type of thinking known as sensory awareness, choosing this bird species specifically to represent a branching point in the evolutionary tree of life. The tasks were quite simple but involved some advanced brain tools, as described in the study:
After the crow began the trial… a brief visual stimulus of varying intensity appeared… After a delay, a rule signal informed the crow how to respond if it had seen or had not seen the stimulus. A red signal required a response to detect the stimulus (“yes”), while a blue signal prohibited a response when the stimulus was detected.
The intelligence of crows is at least comparable to that of some monkey species.
The researchers wrote that sensory awareness is the ability to have subjective experiences that can be “clearly accessed and therefore reported” from a brain that has evolved over time. This awareness is mostly envisioned for the primate cortex, but the brains of birds like crows are different because they diverged from the evolutionary lineage 320 million years ago.
However, the crows performed in a way that affirmed their sensory awareness, which the scientists in the 2020 study suggested could indicate “the neural correlates of consciousness” that have existed since at least the last time birds and mammals shared that common part of the brain.
To reconcile sensory awareness in birds and mammals, a scenario would assume that birds and mammals inherited consciousness traits from their last common ancestor. If true, this could date the evolution of consciousness back at least 320 million years ago.
However, an analysis in the journal Science by another researcher, Suzana Herculano-Houzel from Vanderbilt University, criticized the study’s hypothesis. She suggested that the intelligence of the crows in the study might be “extraordinary” compared to their peers, so it does not necessarily imply that the entire species possesses remarkable intelligence.
One thing is undeniable: crows are among the most intelligent creatures in the avian world.
