Post #14323

New Caledonian Raven: The smartest bird. Not even primates are capable of this level of creativity. At first glance, New Caledonian ravens are not particularly different from our ravens. They fly around New Caledonia (this is an island to the right of Australia), eat everything from grain to lizards and are nothing interesting. Therefore, they did not attract the attention of researchers for a very long time. And that was a mistake. After all, New Caledonian crows are real geniuses, even by the standards of damn smart corvids! Despite the complete absence of arms, tentacles and other grippers, New Caledonian crows are surprisingly well versed in tool-making. Assembling, modifying and atypically using all sorts of sticks and twigs is their domain, in which birds surpass even primates! Let's take chimpanzees for example. They are smart and developed enough to take a thin stick, peel it and rub it under the bark to pull out a larva or two. And then use it to pick your nose or ear. And this is very, very cool, because the vast majority of animals never even think of poking themselves with a stick. But for New Caledonian ravens this is the level of a chick barely getting out of the nest. After all, before poking into the unknown with a stick, the raven takes a leaf, tears it into thin strips and pushes one of the long strips into the gap. This way he can check: is there any tasty larva there at all? And only if the search probe hits an obstacle, it will go looking for a suitable branch. And the raven will approach this task as creatively as possible. Instead of breaking off an ordinary boring twig, the smart bird will go looking for a stick with a spike or a cool squiggle at the end. And if there isn’t one, he’ll just make it himself. He will find a curved branch and cut it so that the bend is as pronounced as possible and resembles a fish hook. And all this without using your hands! But even such an advanced tool may not be enough if the larva is hidden too deep, and you really want to eat. Then the raven can assemble a super-stick from several smaller sticks at once. For example, insert hollow stems into one another to lengthen the structure. Moreover, laboratory experiments show that birds are able to do this without any prior training. And this is only a fraction of the power of the little raven’s mind. They not only know how to make tools consisting of 3-4 parts, but are also able to observe each other, copying tool-making skills, and also use materials that cannot be found in the wild - plastic, metal and even micro-brushes given by scientists in experiments. It’s scary to imagine what these unique people would have come up with if they had hands... Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot