[presidio9]

[Rodney King]

Crows are damn smart. When I was a kid, I used to try to shoot them in my backyard with a cheap crossman pellet gun. After one or two shots, they knew exactly which tree line they could sit in without being hit... and they would sit there and sit there squawking at me. So, I saved up a few weeks of paper route money and bought a really powerful pellet gun, and nailed two of them when I got home. That pushed them back another 50 yards or so.

[Red Badger]

They now have something to crow about......

[robertpaulsen]

[MD_Willington_1976]

They still aren't smart enough to figure out that the Aluminum foil is on the bottom of the cake tray and not the top...bang...bang...bang...

[Tijeras_Slim]

Hey... presidio's ranting and raven over here.

[PilloryHillary]

[Alberta's Child]

This story doesn't surprise me at all. Ravens, which look similar to crows and are probably from the same bird family, have always been considered among the smartest creatures in the animal world. I read an article about them a couple of years ago that was totally fascinating. The most amazing thing about them is their apparent ability to understand cause/effect relationships for a series of events.

The article or one of the follow-up letters contained a description of one raven that would sit in an oak tree along a busy road, dropping acorns down on the road in the hopes that a squirrel would get run over by a car while gathering them. The raven would then feed on the carcasses of these dead squirrels.

[RightWhale]

No crows here, however ravens are everywhere. They talk if they want to.

[D Edmund Joaquin]

Crows are good watchmen like geese. They will alert you to strange people or animals coming around. If the person or animal belongs in the vicinity, they are quiet.

[martin_fierro]

Scientists: Crows Have Natural Tool-Making Ability

[Ruth A.]

Aesop knew that crows were smart.

[HenryLeeII]

The crows -- three males and one female -- were raised in artificial nests and then transferred to aviaries that contained a variety of twigs and food hidden in crevices. Two of the birds were shown by their human foster parents how to pry food out of tiny spaces with the twigs but the other birds were not. "All four crows developed the ability to use twig tools," Kacelnick and his colleagues said in a report in the science journal Nature.

My son knew the difference between pliers and a wrench at age two, and could distinguish between a Philips head and regular screwdriver - distinctions that most intellectuals and many scientists can't make - yet no one is writin' articles about him in Nature!

[DocRock]

I feel that the headline is misleading as the birds did not "make" a tool, but rather used a twig as a tool. Making a tool and using a tool are two different things.

They are smart and I have witnessed their ability in person. The local crows wait at the shopping center for shoppers to park. The birds go up and down the sidewalk parking spots, (in the shade), jump up and eat the fresh bugs off the front of the vehicles and then get a nice cool drink from the condensation puddle under the air conditioner compressor. I have a store front window and see this every business day.