Crows are Us - Memory, Planning, the Use of Tools and Facial Recognition

Maneka Sanjay Gandhi writes about the intelligence of corvids shown in recent research studies.

- Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

A few days ago, I was on my early morning walk when a crow sitting on my gate started cawing at me. He was very agitated as I stood there trying to understand what he wanted. After two minutes, I turned my back and started walking off. Immediately, he flew at my head and pulled my hair. I turned around mystified and, because I didn’t know what else to do, brought him a biscuit and water. He took a piece and smashed it against the gate till it became a swallowable size, gave me one last disgusted look and flew off.

Crows and ants are my “thing”. So smart, so elegant, so sophisticated, so family-minded, so disciplined – everything that humans should be and are not. Every few months, I write about them and each time, it is about a new facet of their intelligence, which so outshines mine.

What Is Intelligence?

Flying to a country several oceans away and landing on the same tree. Is that not uncommon intelligence? But we only measure intelligence by comparing it to things we do, like mimicking human speech or adding two and two.

According to a study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, crows have a sharp memory for human faces and can even remember which person is dangerous. Even if they meet the same person in a new place, they will recognize them. In an experiment, researchers in masks held the bodies of dead crows while laying out food for the living ones. The crows rejected the food, alerted all the other crows and attacked the researchers. When the researchers returned weeks later wearing the same masks and without the dead crows, the birds continued to harass them. No food was picked up in that area for days after that. When a crow encounters a mean human, it teaches other crows how to identify that human. Crows can recognize cars, gaits, and even timings and they hold grudges.