Ravens and crows may be just as clever as chimps, new study suggests

A new study by researchers at Lund University in Sweden suggests that corvid birds can be as clever as chimpanzees, despite having much smaller brains.

The team first trained the birds to obtain a treat in an opaque tube with a hole at each end. They repeated the test with a transparent tube. The animal impulse would naturally be to go straight for the tube as they saw the food. However, all of the ravens chose to enter the tube from the ends in every try. The researchers say the performance of the jackdaws and the crows came very close to 100%.This is comparable to a performance by bonobos and gorillas.

The researchers signs off saying “What is without doubt is that great apes and Corvus corvids have pronounced motor self-regulatory behaviour in relation to the cylinder task, despite very different absolute different brain sizes”.

Details of the research appear in the latest issue of journal Royal Society Open Science.