Was reading something unrelated, and came across this extract on crows. Found it quite interesting!
Crows can recognize your face, hold a grudge for years, and warn other crows to avoid you. The thousands flying in cities right now are running a nightly operation that puts most logistics companies to shame.
Every evening from fall through early spring, crows worldwide gather in massive groups to sleep together. It’s called communal roosting. In 1973, a biologist at Tel Aviv University named Amotz Zahavi figured out why. His theory: the roost works like a group chat. Crows that found food during the day show up well-fed. Crows that didn’t eat watch who looks healthy, then follow them the next morning to wherever the food is. The flock is a nightly information exchange.
A crow has about 1.5 billion brain cells. That’s roughly the same as some monkeys. The cells are just smaller and packed closer together, which may actually make them faster. In lab tests using the same setup for both animals, crows and monkeys held the same number of items in short-term memory: about four.
Crows bend wire into hooks to reach food. They teach each other which individual humans are dangerous. In 2024, German researchers taught them to count aloud, using different calls for different numbers. A 2020 study in Science found crows are aware of what they’re seeing and can think about it before acting. Until that paper, only humans and monkeys had shown that ability.
Time to relook at that scavenger tag that we have given them:)
See you tomorrow!