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There is an interesting article in the April issue of Scientific American detailing research into two aspects of ravens. The article entitled "Just How Smart Are Ravens", reviews the results of two experiments.... 1) meat is hung from a long string attached to a horizontal pole. The solution would be for the raven to haul the string up a bit at a time, place its claw on it then duplicate the process until the meat is within reach. The researchers found that mature ravens studied the situation for several minutes then performed the entire procedure on the first try. Immature ravens tried several things but didn't solve the problem. Thus ravens use logic to solve problems. 2) The second experiment was based on the species talent for hiding caches of food. Two ravens were place in a cage where one could see out in a certain direction and the other could not. A third raven was given food which it hid in various places within sight of the "knower" raven. When the two caged ravens were released, the third raven paid no attention to the "non-knower" raven but chased the "knower" raven away from all the caches. This demonstrated that ravens can identify others on an individual level. Corvids have been shown to have mental capacity beyond that of most other bird species and their abilities appear to be on a par with that of the great apes. There is much more interesting tidbits in the article. More can be read here but not the entire article. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=5BBE6143-E7F2-99DF-333BD2110A8790EE Angus
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