While a crow's brain may seem small in comparison to a human brain, what matters is the size of the brain in relation to the size of the animal. Relative to its body, a crow's brain and a primate brain are comparable. According to Professor John Marzluff at the University of Washington's Aviation Conservation Lab, a crow is essentially a flying monkey. Whether it's a friendly monkey or more like a fiend from "The Wizard of Oz" depends a lot on what you've done to the crow (or any of its friends).
Can you tell one crow from another? In this respect, a crow may be smarter than you because it can recognize individual human faces. Marzluff's team captured crows, tagged them, and released them. Members of the team wore different masks. Crows would dive-bomb and scold people wearing a mask, but only if the mask had been worn by someone who had messed with them.
If you think two crows watching you and cawing at each other are talking about you, you're probably right. In Marzluff's study, even crows that were never captured attacked scientists. How did the crows describe their attackers to other crows? Crow communication is poorly understood. The intensity, rhythm, and duration of caws seems to form the basis of a possible language.
It turns out crows can pass on a grudge to their offspring — even subsequent generations of crows harassed masked scientists. Another case of crow memory comes from Chatham, Ontario. Around half a million crows would stop in Chatham on their migration route, posing a threat to the farming community's crops. The mayor of the town declared war on crows and the hunt began. Since then, the crows have bypassed Chatham, flying high enough to avoid being shot. This had not, however, stopped them from leaving droppings all over the municipality.
Planning for the future isn't only a human trait. For example squirrels cache nuts to store food for lean times.
When a crow caches food, it looks around to see if it's being observed. If it sees another animal is watching, the crow will pretend to hide its treasure, but will really stash it in its feathers. The crow then flies away to find a new secret spot. If a crow sees another crow hiding its prize, it knows about this little game of bait-and-switch and won't be fooled. Instead, it will follow the first crow to discover its new hoard.
It turns out crows can pass on a grudge to their offspring — even subsequent generations of crows harassed masked scientists.
Another case of crow memory comes from Chatham, Ontario. Around half a million crows would stop in Chatham on their migration route, posing a threat to the farming community's crops.
The mayor of the town declared war on crows and the hunt began. Since then, the crows have bypassed Chatham, flying high enough to avoid being shot. This had not, however, stopped them from leaving droppings all over the municipality.
Cats and dogs can solve relatively complex problems, but they can't make and use tools. In this respect, you could say a crow is smarter that Fido and Fluffy. If your pet is a parrot, its intelligence is as sophisticated as a crow's.
Yet, intelligence is complicated and difficult to measure. Parrots have curved beaks, so it's harder for them to use tools. Similarly, dogs don't use tools, but they have adapted to work with humans to get their needs met. Cats have mastered humanity to the point of being worshiped. Which species would you say is smartest?
Modern scientists recognize it's practically impossible to apply an intelligence test across different species because an animal's skill at problem-solving, memory, and awareness depend on its body shape and habitat as much as on its brain. Yet, even by the same standards used to measure human intelligence, crows are super smart.