Crows consciously control their calls

Crows can voluntarily control the release and onset of their calls, suggesting that songbird vocalizations are under cognitive control, according to a study published August 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Katharina ...

No fooling crafty crows on best plants for tool-making

Like master artisans selecting the finest raw materials for their showpiece designs, New Caledonian crows identify the best plants for fashioning hunting hooks from among myriad shrubs in the forest undergrowth, researchers ...

New Caledonian crows can create tools from multiple parts

An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the University of Oxford has revealed that New Caledonian crows are able to create tools by combining two or more otherwise non-functional ...

Crows 'reverse engineer' tools from memory: study

New Caledonian crows use mental pictures to twist twigs into hooks and make other tools, according to a provocative study that suggests the notoriously clever birds pass on successful designs to future generations, a hallmark ...

Crafty crows know what it takes to make a good tool

Biologists at the University of St Andrews have discovered how New Caledonian crows make one of their most sophisticated tool designs - sticks with a neatly-shaped hooked tip.

Rooftop wiretap aims to learn what crows gossip about at dusk

What are crows saying when their loud cawing fills a dark winter's evening? Despite the inescapable ruckus, nobody knows for sure. Birds congregate daily before and after sleep, and they make some noise, but what might be ...

page 3 from 9