The Crow: One Smart Bird
I remember in the BBC special The Life of Birds with the wonderful David Attenborough when crows would drop walnuts from power wires over a crosswalk, then wait for cars to run over them and break the shells, then descend to the street and hop with pedestrians across to grab the shelled nuts. Smart birds.
Check out this clip from the BBC show and be impressed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0
There was a piece on crow intelligence in yesterday’s New York Times Science section titled Moral: Aesop Knew His Crows.
If I couldn’t drink the water (like if I didn’t have opposable thumbs) I don’t know if I’d have thought of the pebble solution. But the crow did. Smart bird. Here is the Aesop Fable about the crow and the pitcher. By the way, my last name means “beak” in German so I can relate to this fable. Why somebody way back when would adopt the name “schnabel” is beyond me.
A Crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into
the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. At last, at last, he saw the water mount up near him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.
