On experiments 1 and 2, the 5 to 7-year-old group performed similarly to the crows, showing that they were able to learn how to get a reward in the same way. In 2012, groups of children completed experiments 1, 2, and 6. The birds were puzzled by this task, and chose the right tube only 48.9% of the time, a result no better than chance. The reward was in a tube they couldn't fit a rock into, and only one of the other two outside tubes was connected to the middle one. The last test presented the crows with an additional complication. More likely, they say, is that the crows understand the tools they are using, but perhaps don't understand the properties of the water they are using the tools on quite as well.Īfter this trial, another crow, WG, declined to participate anymore and joined R in the "lack of motivation" group. They say that this could mean there was "insufficient motivation" to learn the right strategy, though they think that this is unlikely. Most of the time, the birds simply picked one and kept dropping objects into it until they got the piece of meat. The researchers designed it so that birds could get the reward from either tube. Still, this test was not quite like the others. Yet the crows chose the narrow tube only 39% of the time. Dropping objects into the narrower tube would be more efficient and a quicker way to get a snack then using the wider tube. One of these tubes is much narrower than the other. Task 4 was the worst performance for the crows all day. Though the kids had only 5 trials for each experiment, the crows got 20 chances to see if they could successfully learn to solve each task. When children did the same experiment in 2012, they received similar training. This was to get the birds used to the idea of using rocks as a tool (these birds are known to make and use tools). Each task involved trying to raise the water level in a tube enough that the crow could grab the reward of a small scrap of meat tied to a cork.Īs crows don't generally drop rocks in the wild - thankfully for the rest of us - the researchers trained them to pick up rocks and drop them into tubes.
So they caught six birds and devised six experiments, three of which had previously been done by children. They wanted to see whether the crows could understand causal relationships - namely, the idea that if you drop objects in water, it raises the level of the water - and to compare the crows' results to those of children who had previously figured out similar puzzles. scale (sorry, owls) and studies have previously shown that they can indeed learn to raise the water level in a glass in order to snack on a floating worm.Ī group of researchers decided to test the extent of these cognitive abilities by studying a clever species of crow native to the Pacific island of New Caledonia. Crows, rooks, and jays, or Corvidae, top the avian I.Q.
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