How to teach birds to talk. What types of talking birds are there? About crows, who understand you much better than you understand them. Crows determine the physical properties of objects and understand the operation of some physical laws.

Dmitry from Barnaul writes: “Is it true that a crow can be taught to talk? What are the differences between a crow and a raven? Is this a female and a male? Do they carry any diseases that are dangerous to humans?

Igor Mariskin,
Director of the Altai Regional Children's Environmental Center:

Both the raven and the crow belong to the corvid family. This species is usually able to learn to talk. These birds in particular can speak as well as parrots. But such an experiment does not always work out. It is best to take a small chick - later it begins to perceive its owner as an individual of its own species, so its trust factor will be high. As a result, he will gladly reproduce the words “subject to” him.

Raven and crow are two completely different species, each with its own male and female. The raven is a large bird (twice the size of a crow), its beak is powerful and sharp. In addition, it is a scavenger by nature and begins nesting in early spring, when the remains of animals torn to pieces by predators thaw.
The crow feeds on plants, insects, rodents, as well as food waste, like the raven. It is much smaller in size. There are several varieties of it; in the Altai region there are black and gray ones.

In addition, they differ in behavior. The raven can rarely be found anywhere in the urban area; it is secretive and afraid of people. The crow moves freely through city garbage dumps in search of food.

The most common diseases dangerous to humans that these birds carry are Newcastle disease and psittacosis. But it is worth noting that pigeons are much more dangerous in this regard. And if, for example, an infected crow lands on your crop, no infection can be transmitted in this way.

Once upon a time, people had no idea how stupid animals were, because animals hunted, flew, swam and ran better than humans. That is, they bypassed him on all counts. True, they did not know how (or did not want) to talk to us, but our ancestors explained the silence of animals, on the contrary, by their exceptional intelligence. In addition, some animals seemed to acquire human speech, if they really needed it - such things are often talked about in legends. Therefore, our ancestors were sure that animals are as perfect as people, and even more perfect, since they have tails, wings, hooves and divine wisdom.

There were even those who were smarter than the gods. And the gods were often quite beast-like. Everyone knows how the snake deceived Yahweh, the hare deceived the ruler of the underground kingdom of Yanlo, and Athena never went anywhere without her owl, who was wiser than the entire Olympian pantheon. And the poet, murderer, supreme ace Odin, for example, would have been an ordinary sclerotic if not for the ravens Hugin and Munin - Reason and Memory, who supplied God with the missing intellectual abilities. Not a single ancient Scandinavian would have dared to throw a stone at a black bird, since everyone knew that this was the best way to truly upset the one-eyed deity.

Over time, people began to realize that the non-human intelligence of animals is very inferior to that of humans. Already in the Bible there are passages about foolish creatures, which were originally created for complete subordination to man, in order to become his servants, helpers, friends, dinners and new leather shoes.

The most famous corvids

Crow

A large creature: a wingspan of up to one and a half meters, and a weight of two kilograms. The world's smartest bird, and possibly animal other than primates. It can live either near a person or on its own. Glorified by the writer Edgar Allan Poe in his poem “The Raven”.

Crows gray and black

One of the most common birds in the world. Absolute synanthropes: they live only next to a person and everywhere where there is a person (not counting conditions that are completely unsuitable for her, such as deserts - both hot and cold). Sung by the poet Ivan Krylov in the fable “The Crow and the Fox”.

Magpie

All corvids love to steal things from people, but it was the magpie that became the most famous kleptomaniac: absolutely incredible things were found in its nests - from precious jewelry to pages from stolen doctoral dissertations. It is sung by the people, for example, in the little rhyme “The White-sided Magpie.”

Rook

A serious, big-nosed character, respectable, businesslike and not prone to stupid antics. He lives more often in villages, where he helps peasants by picking out the larvae of harmful insects (but also useful ones) from arable lands. Likes to winter in the south. Glorified by the artist Alexei Savrasov in the film “The Rooks Have Arrived”.

Jackdaw

A small bird compared to other corvids with a small beak and gray neck. Constantly runs after the rooks, hiding among their massive carcasses from predators and eating the remains of nuts and acorns torn apart by the rooks (she herself is not old enough to crack hard nuts). The little jackdaw is glorified by Uspensky in “Prostokvashino” (“Who is there? Who is there?”).

Jay

The least intelligent of the corvids. Lives most often in forests, sometimes far from human habitation. Prefers plant foods: nuts and seeds. Although he won’t refuse the sausage you offer either. He knows how and loves to imitate the voices of birds, as well as human speech. If they have been shouting at you from the sky for two hours: “Senya, go home, motherfucker!” - this jay is probably mocking you. Glorified by director Evgeny Ginzburg in the film “Wedding of the Jays”.

How crows are friends with humans

A unique feature of corvids is that most of their species are absolute synanthropes. The gray and black crows are especially distinguished here: they are practically never found more than a few kilometers from human habitation. There are, however, known cases when people saw crows in the remote taiga, but solely for the reason that young crows sometimes tag along with geological and other expeditions and can accompany a detachment walking or riding horses or boats for weeks and even months. Yes, of course, crows are very interested in our garbage dumps and landfills. And human houses can also be used to build nests, although even very urban crows still prefer to build nests in trees. In addition, there are usually no birds of prey near people (although cats, if you look at them, are almost as harmful, and there were always plenty of them around people).

According to the observations of Konrad Lorenz, the famous ethologist, crows spend a considerable part of their day watching us. We remind you that crows have excellent vision: a hundred meters for them is a close and clearly visible distance. The curiosity of these birds is enormous, and our life for them is an infinitely varied show, also with prizes in the form of sausage cores falling into the trash. Crows perfectly distinguish and remember people, even distinguish their voices; they are quite vindictive, but at the same time they are good at reading a person’s mood and intentions. So these birds cannot imagine life without us. Yes, we can be dangerous, but at the same time we are their providers, protectors and clowns. It is not surprising that corvids are one of the most easily tamed animals, and they are often the first to take a step towards humans: weakened, sick or very young birds often come to human habitation for help.

How a man makes friends with crows

The time when ravens were worshiped as “infernal mediators of the other world” (a quote from one very scientific article about ravens) is long gone. Among the Greeks and Romans, the raven was the sacred bird of Apollo; in Scandinavia, as already written, it was Odin’s companion; the Slavs considered it a bird of things and made predictions based on the “raven’s edge.” With the advent of Christianity, all this veneration, of course, came back to haunt the bird: it began to be considered a servant of the devil (who else were all these Odins and Apollos from the point of view of Christians?). The habit of large ravens feeding on the bodies of the fallen on the battlefields, and on the gallows on the corpses of those executed was also considered disgusting, although, to the credit of the ravens, we note that in fact they did not organize battles and put together gallows, they only cleaned them up as best they could, preventing, among other things, , spread of epidemics.

But crows could not be called real pests of crops, and the abundance of their corpses on crosses in the fields was mainly caused by the fact that it was fun and easy to shoot a large crow, accustomed to humans. In the 18th-19th centuries, the active settlement of cities by crows began. Here no one really shot at them, the garbage dumps were piled high, life was more interesting and richer. And until now, the majority of crows in the world are city dwellers, inhabitants of large cities. In Moscow, for example, just a few years ago the population of gray crows was 300-350 thousand. Since the city authorities and the crowdhunters, which have become incredibly active in recent years, began to fight crows, their number has fallen by at least 3-4 times. In some districts of Moscow, for example in Central, the crow has now turned into a rare animal.

What can crows do?

1. Crows recognize themselves in the mirror

2. Crows have their own language

Not just alarms or anything like that, but a real language, including several hundred words at a minimum. The Austrian Center for the Study of Crows named after Konrad Lorenz reports on 250-300 individual established signals, recognizing that the data is incomplete, since some of the sounds pronounced by crows are not recorded by our ears, and recording sounds on various devices is very difficult to decipher. Moreover, crows have dialects that vary from place to place, and a crow, say, a Chinese one, will not understand a word of what a crow, for example, a Spanish crow, says to it. Ethologists are absolutely sure that crows communicate in completely detailed sentences: “Behind the large trees there is a man in blue feathers and holding a loud stick - whoever can save himself!” And the fact that biologists are not yet able to understand the language of crows (as well as the language of monkeys and dolphins, by the way) does not speak in favor of the intelligence of homo sapiens. After all, crows and monkeys are perfectly trained to parse the words of human speech and understand some of them.

3. Crows count to ten

This has been confirmed by experiments at the Biocenter at Moscow State University. The crows were asked to choose food from different boxes, and the crows unerringly chose the box whose lid had more marks than the others: not five or seven, for example, but nine; not two or three, but five. For it was in boxes with a large number of marks that they were always served food.

4. Crows model the behavior of other people and animals

Let's say jays (also corvids, as we remember) love to hide acorns and nuts in hiding places. Corvids have excellent vision, much better than a human, so a jay hiding an acorn always looks around anxiously - is another jay watching it from somewhere? And if secret surveillance is noticed, then the jay leaves the acorn in its hiding place and flies off to the side. He waits until the observing jay flies away, and then rushes back to the hiding place, grabs the acorn and flies to hide it in another, unlit place. That is, it builds a complex model of the opponent’s likely actions (it can fly in when the owner is not there and steal the nest egg) and gives him false information about his intentions.

5. Crows use tools

Worse, they make tools. Even worse, they make tools to obtain other tools, which, according to many anthropological characteristics, indicates the presence of a full-fledged mind! An experiment in which a raven connects two sticks to push out a long hook from a crack, with which it fishes out a treat from a jug, was carried out at the University of Cambridge, repeated and recorded by New Zealanders and Austrians. Moreover, if the Austrians and British worked with crows, the New Zealanders successfully repeated the task with Caledonian black crows.

6. Crows determine the physical properties of objects and understand the operation of some physical laws

At the same Cambridge University, crows quickly figured out how to get the key they needed to open a box with a feeder from a narrow and deep vessel with water. They threw stones into an adjacent container until a key tied to a rubber tag floated to the top, rising with the level of liquid in both containers. Moreover, when scientists threw several stone-like pieces of cork and rubber onto an area with stones, the crows poked the fake with their beaks and lost interest in it, as they immediately realized that this load would not help them: it was too light and would float on top.

7. Crows spend half their free time playing.

Even adults. Even very old ones. The list of games loved by these birds is huge: they ride down slides and church domes (sometimes even using cardboard or, for example, can lids); they tease dogs and cats, pretending to be lame or wounded, while their partner sneaks up from behind and pecks the victim in the tail; they pull twigs and pieces of paper that are completely unnecessary to them from each other, rustle packages, roll bottle caps on the asphalt, splash water, dance, swing on branches and perform other acrobatic exercises, drag all sorts of small things out of windows, imitate people’s voices, throw them at us from above small pebbles (hit or miss)... There is a known case with deputies of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk region in 2012: after a rock garden was set up on the roof of the parliamentary building, local crows gathered in a large flock and fired these stones at the deputies’ parked cars, breaking several windows and damaging the hoods. The crows clearly had fun watching the drivers and officials rushing around the cars and powerlessly shaking their fists at the sky. In short, crows perform a lot of actions that are unnecessary for survival, but extremely exciting. Moreover, unlike, for example, domestic dogs, crows are forced to take care of themselves; life is quite cruel to them and, it would seem, leaves no time for nonsense.

8. Crows understand the operation of mechanisms, transport, and city services.

For example, in Moscow at the Rizhsky station, half a century ago, biologists noticed that crows had perfectly learned the schedule of suburban trains and learned to fly up to the platform just when the train was approaching the platform. The birds quickly flew into all vestibules one by one, looking for scraps abandoned by passengers on the previous flight. Moreover, the sparrows and pigeons living there have learned crow habits, and to this day bird patrols regularly fly over electric trains.

9. Crows have the highest level of socialization

Every morning at approximately the same time, the cities of the planet are echoed by croaking. These crows, having woken up and already had time to eat, begin to loudly discuss their plans for the day with all their companions in the area. The hubbub lasts for about half an hour to an hour, after which the morning roll call stops, the birds fly off about their business: young people in flocks, family birds in pairs, outcasts and independent birds in splendid isolation. In the evening, about an hour before sunset, the event is repeated. No group of researchers has yet been able to decipher the raven language; we can only guess what information the birds give each other. What is known is that the appearance of new landfills, large carrion or bird extermination teams becomes immediately known to all groups of crows in the area.

Why are crowdhunters and authorities fighting crows?

The first - out of malice, the second - out of stupidity. But all this, of course, is explained exclusively by good goals. For example, like this.

Crows are carriers of infection
Lies. The crow is a professional scavenger with concentrated acid in the stomach, high body temperature and resistance to a huge number of infections. It is from her that a person has practically no chance of catching an infection. Moreover, by destroying dead birds of other species, as well as the carcasses of mice and rats, crows prevent the spread of many infections.

Crows destroy the clutches of other birds, including rare ones: robins, titmice, robins, buntings, etc.
Partly a lie. Yes, all corvids love to eat eggs and sometimes steal chicks from their nests. But it is robins, buntings and other rare little things that they rarely come across. The menu of corvids mainly includes pigeon and sparrow nests, since there are many of them and they are located in places convenient for crows: drains, chimneys, etc. But forest birds prefer to build nests in dense thorny bushes and other corners that are difficult for crows to reach. . And it is precisely the destruction of such thickets and the general reduction of wastelands, trees and bushes that is the main reason for the disappearance of many species of birds from cities.

Crows pollute buildings - municipalities go bankrupt on painting and whitewashing. And what do they turn cars into!

Lies. Crows leave most of their droppings under their nests, which they build in trees (that’s where you definitely shouldn’t park your car). The crow, the only bird, can be trained to use the toilet - precisely because the bird knows how to control this process, tries not to get dirty in its nest and usually empties its intestines when flying out and entering it.
But man loves to justify himself. Not a single crowdhunter resource, where brave fighters of the “gray bastards” gather, will find an honest admission that I am, supposedly, a sadistic bastard who enjoys watching how an almost intelligent creature flutters, suffers and dies, who has done nothing wrong to me and which could not protect itself from me. No, crowdhunters really want to believe that they are great guys and heroes saving humanity from croaking evil.

This is because the mind can be very, very different. And sometimes it manifests itself in such a way that it is difficult to guess its presence.

“Piastres, piastres...” cried Captain Flint’s parrot at the sight of the golden doubloons. Whether he uttered this phrase consciously or not is unknown. However, pet owners sometimes claim that their pets understand human speech perfectly.

But they can’t answer... They can! There are many cases in the world where animals were able to communicate in simple human language.

FEATHER FRIENDS

The first place among talking animals is, of course, occupied by birds. It turns out that some parrots are capable of not only remembering and pronouncing up to several thousand words, but also consciously operating with them. The BBC has repeatedly shown a documentary in which a parrot named Nkizi, who has a vocabulary of 950 words, enters into a real dialogue with the TV presenter.

So, when asked what he thought about aromatherapy, the parrot categorically stated: “It’s a stinky little medicine.” Not only was Nkizi able to talk, analyze and even joke, he learned to match a photograph with the person depicted in it. When the parrot met Dr. Jane Goodall, whose card he had already seen surrounded by chimpanzees, Nkizi joyfully exclaimed: “Got a chimpanzee?”

One might assume that the Nkizi phenomenon is an exception to the rule. But no! There are hundreds of similar examples. Today, ornithologists with facts in hand claim that some species of parrots are capable of operating a vocabulary of at least 2,000 words.

WISE RAVEN

An interesting story was told by the ancient Roman historian Macrob. In 31 BC. e. Guy Julius Caesar, returning victoriously to Rome, upon entering the city, suddenly heard a raven sitting on the shoulder of a craftsman shout: “Long live Caesar, victorious emperor!” Touched by Gaius Julius, he immediately bought a loyal bird from the artisan, paying a large sum of money for it.

The story could have ended there, but in the crowd there was a poor shoemaker who also decided to improve his affairs at the expense of the talking raven. For a whole year he taught the bird the right words, but the raven did not want to obey. One day, the shoemaker, angry with the stupid bird, exclaimed in his heart: “My money and my time were crying!” It is difficult to say what the raven thought at that moment, but a few weeks later he began to pronounce the phrase required of him. The happy Roman immediately hurried to Caesar with an offer to buy a talking raven from him.

But... The Emperor refused, saying that he did not need the second bird. The shoemaker was ready to tear out his hair in despair, when suddenly the raven clearly said in the voice of his master: “My money and my time were crying!” Everyone laughed. Of course, Caesar also purchased a second bird, paying twice as much for the first.

Ornithologists have long noticed that it is much easier to teach human speech to a raven than to a parrot. To do this, you need to purchase a 2-3-month-old male chick and pronounce the same simple phrases in front of him every day. Scientists guarantee that within a year the raven will begin to repeat them himself.

Due to the structure of the larynx, it makes rude sounds especially well, which is perhaps why, having lost communication with their relatives, in captivity crows like to copy a smoker’s cough, swearing, a dog’s bark or the creaking of a parquet floor. It is quite strange why in Russia people who want to have a talking pet at home do not get a more accessible and easy-to-train little crow, but an exotic parrot.

I WILL NOT GO!

However, it would be much more interesting to have a talking dog or cat at home. And, oddly enough, scientists actually know of cases where cats or dogs were able to consciously pronounce several words in human language. Today, the most famous talking cat is considered to be Masi the cat from Azerbaijan. The compassionate owner picked him up right on the street. For days on end she did not let the kitten out of her hands, talking to him as if he were a small child.

The kitten not only survived, but also learned to meow several dozen words in Russian and Azerbaijani. Macy is able to answer how old he is, say “thank you”, “goodbye” and even snap back. Once, in the presence of a journalist, a woman asked the cat to come down from the curtain, to which the impudent cat replied: “I won’t come down.”

When Professor Dubrov’s book “Talking Animals” appeared on bookstore shelves, the author received hundreds of responses from all over the country. And it turned out that the Macy phenomenon was not a phenomenon at all! Dozens of dogs and cats from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok are able to pronounce “dad”, “mama”, “drink”, “walk”.

Some of them may answer questions or even ask for something. The author of the article himself repeatedly communicated with a cat, which quite clearly and distinctly uttered two words: “mother” and “drink.”

"DAD" AND "CUP"

In 1916, a sensation spread around the world: researcher William Furnis taught an orangutan to pronounce “daddy” and “cup”. For six months, the trainer spent several hours a day standing with the monkey in front of the mirror every day, trying to teach it to pronounce “dad.” The orangutan looked in the mirror together, felt his lips, trying with all his might to repeat the owner’s facial expressions, and the trainer achieved his goal - the orangutan spoke.

Later, the Hayes psychologists were able to teach the chimpanzee Vicki to also say “dad,” “mama,” and “cup.” However, the language of deaf-mutes was easier for monkeys than speech, as was proven by the chimpanzee Washoe, who was “talked” in 1966 by scientists Allen and Beatrice Gardner.

SEA BATTERS

In 1964, American scientist John Lilly decided to try to teach the dolphin Elvar to exhale air in such a way that the resulting sound would resemble human speech. The result of the experiment exceeded all expectations. Since then, every morning the dolphin “gurgled” to John the words: All right, let's go (“Well, let’s start”),

And in the late 1970s, an unusual seal named Hoover appeared at the New England Aquarium in Boston. The animal could not only accurately imitate human speech, it could clearly pronounce individual words and even entire phrases, entering into dialogue with visitors to the aquarium. As the American press of those years wrote, the seal, being in a good mood, greeted guests with the words: “How are you?”

In 2012, American scientists discovered a whale capable of imitating human speech and producing sounds several octaves below its range. An unusual beluga whale lives in the coastal waters of California.

If he was angry, he could shout in a deep voice at the unlucky visitor: “Get out of here!” Scientists have repeatedly noted that the Seal “talks” much better than parrots. And Hoover became the most talkative at the moment of mating, apparently trying to impress his next passion with his eloquence. The talkative seal died in 1985, leaving behind six children who never spoke.

Sometimes an animal itself is ready to communicate with a person, but the person simply does not hear him. Thus, a beluga whale named Knox, a student of the American National Marine Mammal Foundation, independently learned a few words and tried to talk with the foundation’s staff. But people did not pay attention to the beluga's attempts. And only after Knox’s death, while watching newsreels, did experts hear his words. But it was too late.

COOL ELEPHANT

The elephant, Kosik, a resident of the South Korean zoo, is well known to researchers. He is able to clearly pronounce five Korean words. But the most phenomenal is the elephant Batyr from the Karaganda Zoo. One evening, zoo workers almost turned gray when they heard a trumpet call from his enclosure: “Give the elephant something to drink!”

Batyr is talking

It turns out that that day the zookeepers forgot to leave a bucket of water, from which Batyr was used to drinking water at night. The story received wide publicity, and soon journalists, biologists and linguists began to frequent the zoo. To their joy, the elephant did not leave any of them unattended, tirelessly repeating “Good Batyr”, “Well done Batyr”. For a long time, scientists could not explain the phenomenon of Batyr’s speech.

But then it turned out: to reproduce the words, the elephant put the tip of its trunk into the roti and pressed it with its lips. The funniest of the talking elephants is considered to be the Indian elephant Jumbo, a simple rural worker. Having heard a lot of profanity from proletarian workers in India, Jumbo perfectly mastered several obscene words.

Such stories can be told for a long time, but the conclusion will be the same: with a lot of desire and a little luck, any of the readers can teach their pet human speech.

Dmitry SIVITSKY

Some birds are great fun for children. A boy or girl sits down not far from the cage in which there are, well, bullfinches, and whistles one tune or song every day. The bird listens attentively to his singing, as if trying to catch the motive. After one or two weeks, she masters it so much that she successfully sings a duet with her friend, or alone amuses him with her pleasant singing.

Children are familiar with the story of Robinson Crusoe, who, in his loneliness on a deserted island, yearned for no people; fate finally took pity on him, giving him a consolation. Robinson became very attached, thanks to the fact that she quickly learned to pronounce words and entertain him.

How to teach a Raven to speak

It is comparatively not very difficult to teach a crow to pronounce words; Having caught them, he repeats them quite distinctly and clearly. To acquire one, you should get a young forest raven - a male - for training. It is almost completely impossible to teach old birds human speech. The most suitable for training is a young crow, approximately 12 days old.

Crows, magpies, starlings can also be taught to speak

The speakers, or rather those that can be trained, also include crows, gray and black, magpies, jackdaws, starlings, etc. The latter have a special talent for catching melodies and whistling them correctly.

The food for the starling is a well-baked bun, pre-soaked in water, then in milk, with the addition of a certain amount of wheat flour. They also readily eat cottage cheese in small quantities.

The jackdaw serves as a great decoration due to its plumage. She feeds on the same substances as the starling, and, in addition, willingly eats small quantities of meat, fruits, acorns, etc.

The cage is usually placed in a barn or some well-protected corner of the yard. They relatively easily and quickly master quite a large number of words and even simple, short sentences, bringing great pleasure to their little teacher with their incessant chatter.

Once upon a time, people had no idea how stupid animals were, because animals hunted, flew, swam and ran better than humans. That is, they bypassed him on all counts. True, they did not know how (or did not want) to talk to us, but our ancestors explained the silence of animals, on the contrary, by their exceptional intelligence. In addition, some animals seemed to acquire human speech, if it was really necessary - such things are often talked about in legends. Therefore, our ancestors were sure that animals are as perfect as people, and even more perfect, since they have tails, wings, hooves and divine wisdom.

There were even those who were smarter than the gods. And the gods were often quite beast-like. Everyone knows how the snake deceived Yahweh, the hare deceived the lord of the underground kingdom of Yanlo, and Athena never went anywhere without her owl, who was wiser than the entire Olympic pantheon. And the poet, murderer, supreme ace Odin, for example, would have been an ordinary sclerotic if not for the ravens Hugin and Munin - Reason and Memory, who supplied God with the missing intellectual abilities. Not a single ancient Scandinavian would have dared to throw a stone at a black bird, since everyone knew that this was the best way to truly upset the one-eyed deity.

And for more than two thousand years, this idea has become so firmly entrenched in our consciousness that, when at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the first cautious information appeared that animals... ahem... in general, they also Complete idiots, this news was received with hostility by the public, even quite scientific ones. Sorry, but how can you compare? Man is the crown of creation, the measure of all things, the one and only bearer of reason, while animals have no reason, pure instincts, they are just machines of their kind. Otherwise, how would we eat them and ride them - intelligent, feeling and thinking creatures?! That is, all the same songs were heard that, several decades earlier, were heard from slave-holding regions, where the prevailing opinion was that black people were much, much stupider than white people. And, if you look at it, they’re not even quite human, but almost like animals.

And still, despite nature protection funds, vegetarianism and other love for our smaller brothers, we refuse to admit that some animals have almost the same complex structure of consciousness as we do (even if this consciousness works differently). After all, this recognition would entail such ethical chaos, such a bunch of problems - social, moral, economic and generally any, that it is easier to continue to consider any dolphin a stupid fish, and at the sight of a chimpanzee mastering the alphabet of the deaf and dumb, to shrug our shoulders and mutter something... then about the miracles of training.

But sometimes in not the most serious publications (like ours) you can quietly, in a whisper, tell the truth? Well, won’t we undermine world civilization if we write a small article about how corvids are very smart birds, which in intelligence and emotionality are not inferior to a 3-4 year old child, and in some other parameters are noticeably superior to even adult homo sapiens?

The most famous corvids

Crow

Crows gray and black

Magpie

Rook

Jackdaw

Jay

Crows vs elephants

Several years ago, under the auspices of the Animal Planet channel, a rating of the most intelligent animals in the world was compiled. A dozen universities, anthropological and zoological societies, laboratories of evolutionary psychologists and ethologists took part in compiling the rating - in general, the jury was very respectable. Primates, as expected, took first place, and dolphins, more or less deservedly, took second place. But after long and heated debates, the elephants climbed up to the third place, panting heavily, displacing the contenders for whom the scientists voted from the prize place. But the TV people were really rooting for the elephants.

Because an elephant is a thing! People love elephants. Elephants are cool! Elephants need to be protected and wonderful programs made about them.

And you don’t see much about those who were illegally and scandalously ousted from the pedestal. They are too familiar to people, nothing exotic: there are heaps of these intellectuals in any trash heap.

Therefore, corvids ended up in fourth place in the ranking, and in company with parrots for some reason, although the intellectual difference between a common raven and some budgerigar will be greater than between the jury members and pig-tailed macaques*.

How crows are friends with humans

But all this is most likely not the main reason. The fact is that, according to the observations of Konrad Lorenz, the famous ethologist, crows spend a considerable part of their day watching us. We remind you that crows have excellent vision: a hundred meters for them is a close and clearly visible distance. The curiosity of these birds is enormous, and our life for them is an infinitely varied show, also with prizes in the form of sausage cores falling into the trash. Crows perfectly distinguish and remember people, even distinguish their voices; they are quite vindictive, but at the same time they are good at reading a person’s mood and intentions. So these birds cannot imagine life without us. Yes, we can be dangerous, but at the same time we are their providers, protectors and clowns. It is not surprising that corvids are one of the most easily tamed animals, and they are often the first to take a step towards humans: weakened, sick or very young birds often come to human habitation for help.

How a man makes friends with crows

However, sometimes ravens were revered even in Christian countries. In the Tower of London, for example, ravens, considered symbols of the British crown, are still required to live, and a special budget is even allocated for their feeding. But with the advent of firearms, crows had to move en masse from villages to cities, as the villagers began to love hanging the corpses of shot birds and their relatives around fields and gardens. Such a sight of crows - social, intelligent and emotional animals - is frightening and shocking. Although the crows did not cause much damage to the fields and vegetable gardens - well, they ran through the beds, played, pulled out beets and rutabaga by their tails... They could have stolen an egg or a chicken from a chicken coop, it was such a sin. But crows could not be called real pests of crops, and the abundance of their corpses on crosses in the fields was mainly caused by the fact that it was fun and easy to shoot a large crow, accustomed to humans. In the 18th–19th centuries, the active settlement of cities by crows began. Here no one really shot at them, the garbage dumps were piled high, life was more interesting and richer. And until now, the majority of crows in the world are city dwellers, inhabitants of large cities. In Moscow, for example, just a few years ago the population of hooded crows was 300–350 thousand. Since the city authorities and the crowdhunters, which have become incredibly active in recent years, began to fight crows, their number has fallen by at least 3-4 times. In some districts of Moscow, for example in Central, the crow has now turned into a rare animal.

See for yourself what crows can do and decide whether it was fair to trample them under elephants?

01. Crows recognize themselves in the mirror

That is, they don’t just see their reflection and react to it by screaming or point-blank without noticing it - dogs, say, are also capable of this. The crows understand what it is, look at themselves (and not without pleasure), remove all sorts of fluff from themselves, using the reflection. Elephants can't do anything like that. But primates - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - also love to show off in front of the mirror, knowing full well who it is that is grimacing back at them.

02. Crows have their own language

Not just alarms or anything like that, but a real language, including several hundred words at a minimum. The Austrian Konrad Lorenz Center for the Study of Crows reports 250–300 individual established signals, admitting that the data is incomplete, since some of the sounds pronounced by crows are not recorded by our ears, and recording sounds on various devices is very difficult to decipher. Moreover, crows have dialects that vary from place to place, and a crow, say, a Chinese one, will not understand a word of what a crow, for example, a Spanish crow, says to it. Ethologists are absolutely sure that crows communicate in completely detailed sentences: “Behind the large trees there is a man in blue feathers and holding a loud stick - whoever can save himself!” And the fact that biologists are not yet able to understand the language of crows (as well as the language of monkeys and dolphins, by the way) does not speak in favor of the intelligence of homo sapiens. After all, crows and monkeys are perfectly trained to parse the words of human speech and understand some of them.

03. Crows count to ten

04. Crows model the behavior of other people and animals

Let's say jays (also corvids, as we remember) love to hide acorns and nuts in hiding places. Corvids have excellent vision, much better than humans, so a jay hiding an acorn always looks around anxiously - is another jay watching it from somewhere? And if secret surveillance is noticed, then the jay leaves the acorn in its hiding place and flies off to the side. He waits until the observing jay flies away, and then rushes back to the hiding place, grabs the acorn and flies to hide it in another, unlit place. That is, it builds a complex model of the opponent’s likely actions (it can fly in when the owner is not there and steal the nest egg) and gives him false information about his intentions.

05. Crows use tools

Worse, they make tools. Even worse, they make tools to obtain other tools, which, according to many anthropological characteristics, indicates the presence of a full-fledged mind! An experiment in which a raven connects two sticks to push out a long hook from a crack, with which it fishes out a treat from a jug, was carried out at the University of Cambridge, repeated and recorded by New Zealanders and Austrians. Moreover, if the Austrians and British worked with ravens, the New Zealanders successfully repeated the task with Caledonian black ravens.

06. Crows determine the physical properties of objects and understand the operation of some physical laws

07. Crows spend half their free time playing

Even adults. Even very old ones. The list of games loved by these birds is huge: they ride down slides and church domes (sometimes even using cardboard or, for example, can lids); they tease dogs and cats, pretending to be lame or wounded, while their partner sneaks up from behind and pecks the victim in the tail; they pull twigs and pieces of paper that are completely unnecessary to them from each other, rustle packages, roll bottle caps on the asphalt, splash water, dance, swing on branches and perform other acrobatic exercises, drag all sorts of small things out of windows, imitate people’s voices, throw them at us from above small pebbles (hit or miss)... There is a known case with deputies of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk region in 2012: after a rock garden was set up on the roof of the parliamentary building, local crows gathered in a large flock and fired at the deputies’ parked cars with these stones, breaking several windows and damaging the hoods. The crows clearly had fun watching the drivers and officials rushing around the cars and powerlessly shaking their fists at the sky. In short, crows perform a lot of actions that are unnecessary for survival, but extremely exciting. Moreover, unlike, for example, domestic dogs, crows are forced to take care of themselves; life is quite cruel to them and, it would seem, leaves no time for nonsense.

08. Crows understand the operation of mechanisms, transport, city services

09. Crows have the highest level of socialization

Every morning at approximately the same time, the cities of the planet are echoed by croaking. These crows, having woken up and already had time to eat, begin to loudly discuss their plans for the day with all their companions in the area. The hubbub lasts for about half an hour to an hour, after which the morning roll call stops, the birds fly off about their business: young people in flocks, families in pairs, outcasts and independent birds in splendid isolation. In the evening, about an hour before sunset, the event is repeated. No group of researchers has yet been able to decipher the raven language; we can only guess what information the birds give each other. What is known is that the appearance of new landfills, large carrion or bird extermination teams becomes immediately known to all groups of crows in the area.

Why are crowdhunters and authorities fighting crows?

The first - out of malice, the second - out of stupidity. But all this, of course, is explained exclusively by good goals. For example, like this.

Crows litter buildings- municipalities are going broke on painting and whitewashing. And what do they turn cars into!
Lies. Crows leave most of their droppings under their nests, which they build in trees (that’s where you definitely shouldn’t park your car). The crow, the only bird, can be trained to use the toilet - precisely because the bird knows how to control this process, tries not to get dirty in its nest and usually empties its intestines when flying out and flying into it. But man loves to justify himself. Not a single crowdhunter resource, where brave fighters of the “gray bastards” gather, will find an honest admission that I am, supposedly, a sadistic bastard who enjoys watching how an almost intelligent creature flutters, suffers and dies, who has done nothing wrong to me and which could not protect itself from me. No, crowdhunters really want to believe that they are great guys and heroes saving humanity from croaking evil.

This is because the mind can be very, very different. And sometimes it manifests itself in such a way that it is difficult to guess its presence.

Text: Danila Maslov

How to teach birds to talk. What types of talking birds are there? About crows, who understand you much better than you understand them. Crows determine the physical properties of objects and understand the operation of some physical laws.

Igor Mariskin, Director of the Altai Regional Children's Environmental Center:

How to teach a Raven to speak

Crows, magpies, starlings can also be taught to speak

The most famous corvids

Crow

Crows gray and black

Magpie

Rook

Jackdaw

Jay

Crows vs elephants

How crows are friends with humans

How a man makes friends with crows

See for yourself what crows can do and decide whether it was fair to trample them under elephants?

01. Crows recognize themselves in the mirror

02. Crows have their own language

03. Crows count to ten

04. Crows model the behavior of other people and animals

05. Crows use tools

06. Crows determine the physical properties of objects and understand the operation of some physical laws

07. Crows spend half their free time playing

08. Crows understand the operation of mechanisms, transport, city services

09. Crows have the highest level of socialization

Why are crowdhunters and authorities fighting crows?

Igor Mariskin,
Director of the Altai Regional Children's Environmental Center: