Is this cocky cartoon crow animal genius?
SO there I was minding my own business after throwing a large crust onto the grass near our Scottish Lodge, thinking the jackdaws, passing gulls or close in small brown jobs, like chaffinches or sparrows, might feast.
How wrong can you be and then completely amazed in turn.
A cocky cartoon crow, carrion by name, walked like John Wayne into town.
The street cleared and latter-day Billy the Kid’s scattered, while one crazy magpie considered the steal from the safety of a nearby saloon, before thinking better of it.
John Crow, Corbie to the locals, picked up the sizeable chunk of sourdough and, without ‘thought’ or so it seemed, flew to the gutter of my closest neighbour and immediately dunked the bread in the rainwater and waited a few seconds as it became easier to swallow.
He came back two minutes later to help himself to the rest.
I know, genius.
But hang on, does this become more uncanny when you realise that it has not rained for three or four days and had only just stopped minutes before he arrived.
Clever enough already and Big John has obviously done this trick before, but seriously, I do understand that corvids are clever, but was he actually able to reason that because it had just rained he could dip his bread? Amazing. And there is evidence to back up this anthropomorphic notion.
Corvids include magpies, ravens, jackdaws, rooks and jays and they all have relatively large brains, which some claim equates to more intelligence.
Like apes, many birds employ tools to gather food, but it isn’t clear whether chimps or crows appreciate how these tools work. It may be that they simply discover their usefulness by accident.
However, studies of New Caledonian crows from the South Pacific suggest otherwise. New Caledonian crows manufacture two very different types of tool for finding prey.
Hooks crafted from twigs are used to poke grubs from holes in trees, while they also cut up stiff leaves with their beaks, carefully sculpting them into sharp instruments for probing leaf detritus for insects and other invertebrates.
A New Caledonian crow in captivity learned how to bend a piece of straight wire into a hook to probe for food.
Such sophisticated tool manufacture and use is unique in non-human wild animals according to Jackie Chappell, a UK-based zoologist who has studied the birds. Other corvids may use memories of past experiences to plan ahead or take advantage of a ‘remembered’ or ‘preexperienced’ happening, perhaps like my bird.
When I did a Masters in Education, I called this ‘pre-cognitive reflection,’ meaning many of the things we do are guided by past experiences and therefore we do not actually ‘think’ about them, we just do it.
We respond based on our stored knowledge.
Is this what the crows are doing and, when they perform an action for the first time, was it learned from another bird, a parent, or was it purely opportunistic?
I’ll wager a mixture, but of course we will never know until we can talk to the animals.
In the case of Western scrub jays, a previous study suggests jays with past experience of pilfering food caches collected by other jays can then use this knowledge to protect their own caches.
Another of my own observations could go both ways and I would be happy for any thoughts on this encounter 30 years ago at Crowden in Longdendale.
Whilst driving towards Tintwistle, I spotted a large cat on top of a drystone wall and a magpie four feet away on the same wall.
I was able to park up and watch the interaction.
Both animals faced each other, but what came next has always puzzled me.
Midway between the two was a dead mouse.
Firstly the cat moved forward and picked up the mouse and placed it carefully inches from the magpie before moving back.
After bobbing up and down for a few seconds, the magpie picked up the mouse, hopped forward and placed the dead rodent in front of the cat, before moving back himself.
I would guess that this exchange took place around six times before the feline finished proceedings by clearing off with the mouse. I kid you not but, the magpie kicked off good style with a raucous chorus.
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