Optical Aleutian: Accodring to some sources they're also fairly good at pronouncing monosyllabic words like "corn", "snow" and "dead".

As well as displaying insights into the proper disposal of the undead.

When I was a kid, I lived near this tiny town up on the MN/Canadian border for a few years. There was a grizzled old guy who owned an ancient bait shop that kept a pet raven or crow in a small cage. He told me the bird understood basic speech, and that it could talk because he had split its tongue with a razor sharp buck knife he always had on him and used as a kind of multi-tool.
Actually, that whole place was the stuff of a few nightmares.

csb

Point an army for me, Raif Severence.

Also "the only animal" and "the only animal currently proven in ridiculously convoluted and backwards minded laboratory experimentation" are completely different.

Since there are many birds nearly as smart as ravens, some allegedly smarter, it's pretty much safe to assume that all of them can do this as well. Also dolphins and whales definitely on par with humans. Canines and felines for certain, although cats aren't going to do it for you unless it gets them extra dinner and you can fake like you don't want them to do it. Freakin' misleading conclusion to jump to.

Science is great, but science reporting is in need of over 9x10³ cockpunches.

Ravens 'point to' objects to attract each other's attention in a similar way to humans, research has discovered.

Until now, it was thought the only animals which communicate this way were apes.

But a study by German and Austrian experts revealed ravens to be far more intelligent than previously thought.


Bull and shiat. Ravens were long thought to be smartest among nearly all the animals you could encounter. Hunter cultures don't pick trickster gods like ravens, rabbits, foxes, and coyotes out of a hat. Those are the animals that will make a fool of you if you try to match wits with them in a forest.

Corvids in general are very smart birds. Some crows are known to make tools.

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basemetal: Corvids in general are very smart birds. Some crows are known to make tools.

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They also supposedly have their own "language," can remember your face and communicate it to others, and other wonderful and horrifying things that make me want to never watch Hitchcock's "The Birds" EVER AGAIN!!!

"Researchers find Ravens are the only species other than apes who can 'point' and share objects like humans - and some members of Congress sweep the Steelers."

/Wrong tab, still oblig.

and some members of Congress [citation needed]

The Walkin' Dude approves.

RexTalionis: [www.dogs-info.net image 400x266]

Thank you.

Squawky: Apes such as chimps don't understand the concept of pointing or gesturing to something you want them to look at. (Dogs get it completely, though.)

/as seen on PBS

Exactly.

Quoth the raven, `Over there.'

justadadX3: Harv72b: "Researchers find Ravens are the only species other than apes who can 'point' and share objects like humans - and some members of Congress sweep the Steelers."

/Wrong tab, still oblig.

'cept in the playoffs.

So far. ;)

Douglas Adams had it wrong.

It's not dolphins that are the second most intelligent form of life on the planet, it's crows.

//I guess that would make humans 4th instead of 3rd though...

They are also the only animal that points and snickers.

Quoth the Raven: Get a load of that dumbass! Let's peck his eyes out!

Exceptionally mean and sarcastic ravens can learn words and phrases of more than one syllable such as: Nevermore! and "Have you filed our 1040 yet?"

The longest sentence ever spoken by a raven is: "Traffic is backed up on the 401 due to a dead moose on the third lane highway in the downtown direction, but a clean-up crew is on the job and should have the moose carcass stripped to the bone in three days, two days if the ants help."

In the mythology of the West Coast natives, Raven is the trickster figure and also plays a major role in the Creation Myth.

In the Noah Legend, Noah releases a raven and a dove. The raven, being a stronger flier, does not return, presumably having found land at a distance. The dove returns with an olive twig in its beak. Mariners actually did this before the compass was invented. For thousands of years they relied on birds to tell them when they were close to shore. A raven would return if land is more than about 200 miles away, while a dove would return if it found no rest at a much shorter distance. This worked well for thousands of years because mariners did not like to risk the high seas because there was no telling what would eat you if you ventured too far from land. An accurate way of measuring longitude was only invented in the 1700s, when accurate chronometers came into use, as shown in the series, Longitude. Latitude was easy because all you had to do was measure the elevation of stars, the Sun, or the Moon (in a pinch when the stars couldn't be seen) and compare with tables of astronomical data.

Is not unbridaled anthropomorphism fun?

Self centered fools that speculate are also fun.

/commercial tv is brought to you today by the letter a

I mean you can anthropomorphise most anything you do not really understand.

Like politicians, World Climate, and the like.

Karma Curmudgeon: <csb> I saw one of the most curious things I've ever seen over the summer. A flock of eight to ten crows silently got into a a perfectly straight line in a field near the border where where the mowing had stopped and shorter grass went to about three feet tall. They were all facing due south and arranged themselves so that they were an equal distance apart from each other. If one moved to the right to get to that equal distance, all of the crows on the right moved similarly to the right to maintain their separation that, from my vantage point about 100 yards away, looked to be about 10 feet between each bird. This went on for a good two or three minutes and once they achieved what appeared to be perfectly equal separation, they maintained their positions almost perfectly still for about 30 seconds, then one bird let a single, piercing "caw" and they all took flight in unison heading due south. Shortly into the flight they broke the pattern and went they're separate ways and I can't for life of me figure out what they were trying to accomplish.</csb>

They were trying to fark with your head. Looks like they succeeded.

I have a small murder of crows that visits the small fountain in the backyard on a daily basis. Every time I go out there when they are around, they scream at me in recognition as I quite frequently throw whole slices of bread at them which they seem to appreciate.