Who amongst us would have ever thought that crows will one day successfully prove to the world that their brains are sharper than most of the other species in the animal kingdom?
The latest study concerning the intelligence quotient of crows claimed that the new caledonian crows are capable of fashioning tools that would catalyze their survival by putting together numerous independent parts. The tendency of a species to construct equipment was something that occurred amongst the great apes and humans too.
The most interesting part lies in the fact that human children cannot master the strategies of combining separate pieces into an instrument in the early years of their lives. To do so, one must possess foresight, problem-solving skills, and brainpower in the list of inexorable requisites.
As per the statements of Auguste von Bayern, a zoologist who seeks to understand how animals, in particular corvids and parrots think, the first author of the study from the University of Oxford and Max-Planck Institute of Ornithology, their findings of this research are incredible. The crows that had been subjects of the investigation did not receive any assistance or training whatsoever while making these combinations; every bit of the mechanism was delineated by themselves.
In the experiment, the masters of the avian world were served with see-through boxes that had trays of food placed inside them. To reach the food, the crows had to poke through the walls of the box with a stick and rest it on a small hole. Then they needed to further push and transport the food to an opening posited on the other side of the box.
In the first step, the researchers procured the crows with long sticks around the box, and evidently, the crows knew how to pick them up, poke through the hole on one of its sides and get the food. However, the sticks were not long enough, and they could not reach the tray of food. Thus, the only solution was to combine these small sticks with others of similar size and then draw the food towards themselves, and to everyone’s surprise, four out of the eight crows executed the same strategy. Instead of attempting to push the tray with a stick of the inappropriate size, they made their tools by assembling the smaller sticks to transform it into bigger ones.
The crows were able to formulate a variety of ways to fix this issue, and concluded with an efficient solution. Furthermore, one smart crow from this group fabricated a sophisticated tool; meaning, he created a longer stick by combining four parts of the smaller sticks to poke from a considerable distance.
The truth that crows are great learners and are often classified as one of those animals that can employ tools both when free and captive cannot be denied. Now, after evaluating this discovery and the results of the research, we can safely assert that crows are blessed to make use of their memories in ways that are untraversed by animals and human beings alike
