you all know how much i love corvids

they're funny. they're smart. they're pretty. here is yet MORE proof (not that I NEEDED ANY!)

Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than Fiction
By Hadley Leggett

Aesop’s fables are full of talking frogs and mice who wear clothes, but it turns out at least one of the classic tales is scientifically accurate.

Researchers presented four crows with a challenge from Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher”: a container of water not quite full enough for the birds to reach with their beaks. Just like Aesop’s crow, all four birds figured out how to raise the water level by dropping stones into the glass. The crows also selectively chose large pebbles over small ones, and quickly realized that dropping rocks into a container of sawdust didn’t have the same effect..........

pic: Illustration by Milo Winter from The Aesop for Children/Project Gutenberg etext 19994.

i love all things crow, raven, rook

please note when the skinny tube is placed in the cage, the rook uses the SMALL stone. shoot, i don't even know if i would have done that
Clever birds rival chimpanzees in tool use

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Researchers have found that rooks, a member of the crow family, are capable of using and making tools despite not doing so in the wild.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University who conducted the study believe the rooks' ability to use tools are the by-product of a sophisticated form of physical intelligence..........

(ht: americablog)

i believe i posted about the original article

so when i saw this, i thought i'd best post it as well


'NYT' Correction on Article, from Last December, To Appear This Sunday -- Nothing to 'Crow' About?



By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 10, 2009 9:20 AM ET

NEW YORK An extensive and unusual correction appears in The New York Times Magazine arriving this Sunday. One question that arises: Why did it take so long?

The correction reveals that a very short piece in the magazine's December 14, 2008, issue -- about experiment involving crows at the Binghamton (N.Y.) zoo -- was wildly inaccurate and exaggerated, and the newspaper's fact-checker failed to make essential inquiries. As usual it does not name the reporter, who was freelancer Claire Trageser..........

my favorite bird, crows

seems they are a LOT like me. if you piss them off, they rememeber, they do NOT forgive and forget
check out the video at the link below. it's wicked cool (via boing boing)

Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems

By MICHELLE NIJHUIS
Crows and their relatives — among them ravens, magpies and jays — are renowned for their intelligence and for their ability to flourish in human-dominated landscapes. That ability may have to do with cross-species social skills. In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces.
John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington, has studied crows and ravens for more than 20 years and has long wondered if the birds could identify individual researchers. Previously trapped birds seemed more wary of particular scientists, and often were harder to catch. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s an annoyance, but it’s not really hampering our work,’ ” Dr. Marzluff said. “But then I thought we should test it directly.”.........

the morrighan

as you are aware, the address of my blog starts off with the morrighan.

crows and ravens are my totem animals (isn't my photo on my blog profile rather raven-like?). well wolves are too. BUT this story is about crows not wolves.

crows and ravens are just AMAZING animals. smart AND they have a sense of humor as well.

Cleverest crows opt for two tools

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

Crows have shown that two tools are better than one when it comes to problem solving, scientists say.
A University of Auckland study has revealed that New Caledonian crows can use separate tools in quick succession to retrieve an out-of-reach snack.
The birds were using reasoning that was more commonly seen in great apes and humans, the New Zealand team reported in the journal Current Biology.
New Caledonian crows are renowned for their tool-making ability.
The birds (Corvus moneduloides), which are found on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, use their bills to whittle twigs into hooks and cut and tear leaves into barbed probes that can extract bugs and grubs from crevices. ..........

picture: heartofthemorrighan.org

smaller picture: amy brown design

tattoos (on me) two from amy brown designs
the three raven design (i actually have three of them in different areas) i got from a rubber stamp i saw. it's also on the label of some wine. it represents the three stages of a woman's life (as well as other things)