the jay would screech, and I would copy it. I did this for enough time for the jay to realize this, and then it went from screech to a pleasant coo type sound.

Even so, it can be tricky. In Bernd Heinrich's excellent "Mind of the Raven" [2], he points to a story where a woman, lost in the wilderness, noticed a raven crying near her and spotted something like a mountain lion creeping up on her. In the news story she gave the raven credit for warning her and saving her life. But Heinrich points out that ravens have a demonstrated history of leading predators to prey, because that way they get the leftovers with much lower risk. So although the woman was correct that the raven understood her danger and was demonstrating advanced social cooperation, her anthropomorphic bias led her to perhaps be dangerously wrong about who the raven was trying to help.

So although I think shorthand like, "The octopus is playing" is fine for casual use, I think serious people have to always be challenging those tempting assumptions.

[1] e.g., this book https://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/d... or this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

[2] A stellar book, and I recommend it strongly to anybody fascinated by corvids or interested in decoding animal behavior more generally: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/mind-of-the-raven-ber...

That's a hilarious (and scary) story. I made the same cognitive mistake when reading, i.e. assumed that either raven was helping her, or was crying for unrelated reason (because I suspected a twist). It completely didn't occur to me that the animals could have cooperated among themselves.

This is such an excellent insight, thanks for sharing!

Or, perhaps more accurately, humans are one of many intelligent animals and we do behaviours typical of many intelligent animals, and are now noticing that they also do these behaviours (but notice it from a self-centered point of view).

If it looks like duck and quacks like a duck ...

(Kind of like what I did now, hehe)

As a pet owner, I find it absolutely ridiculous and insulting that animals intelligence is assumed to be so low. My firsthand experience is that there is a lot more intelligence there than people generally give them credit for, even if science hasn't delineated every single aspect of it yet. As scientists keep confirming these "discoveries", I think the default assumption (and language) should shift to assuming more similarity than differences unless proven otherwise.

> The crows flexibly produced between one and four vocalizations for corresponding cues associated with numerical values. Furthermore, they used different calls for different numbers.

Is this because the crows might just remember four separate stimuli, and did not demonstrate an understanding of integers in the Peano arithmetics style? I still think that producing a specific number of vocalizations, well, counts as counting.

Counting to 4 seems awfully limited

But when non-human animals use AAC systems, or vocalise words directly, to express wants or needs, they aren't really talking, because they don't use tree-like grammars.

So I'd want to see 3 treats -> 3 croaks, not square -> 3 croaks and circle -> 4 croaks, to remove the quotes.

At the same time, teaching an animal to repeat a behavior an exact number of times is actually very tricky. For example, a dog will likely over-eagerly repeat the action until rewarded.

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

There’s a school of thought/fantasy that the dinosaurs actually had an advanced theropod civilization.

Cool idea. Not sure I buy it, but they might have been quite intelligent.

I used to like seeing the Japanese crows, in Tokyo. I’ve heard they can be real pests.

They are big. Like, raven-sized.

The difference between crows and ravens are who found it first

Crows and ravens, taxonomicaly speaking, are of the same genus, whereas frogs and toads are in different families--not exactly the same area perhaps.

> Ravens are crows, crows are ravens.

I would argue they are distinct.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven

There’s no real feature that separates frogs from toads or ravens from crows.

Taxonomy is more art than science

They have heavy beaks, and about a 4-foot wingspan.

They also have a different “accent” from American crows.

Wikipedia says they are crows: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-billed_crow

I wonder if crows being intelligent has it linked with them being ominous in many litrature

It probably is why crows and ravens get that treatment. Not sure if they're not that fussy about food though, media/literature always makes them seem like vulture like scavenge

So probably that as well?

The point I was emphasizing was that it is not just:

>because they are carrion eaters.

as the parent I replied to asserted.

As for crows, I live in a country where sometime it snows, and I make sure that when it is very cold (snow, ice, or generally below 5 C)I feed the (3) crows of my building. Every time I am outside, walking, they are always looking after me. Flying near me, standing and looking at me, nodding at me. And I always speak to them when they come close, with calm voice (phrases like "I'm friend, you are good, thank you", etc.).

I want to find a way to 'monetize' on this relationship and teach them how to bring me shiny things (I keep thinking but never actually googling on how other people have done this).

There's probably some kind of crow-to-crow "these are friends, these are enemies" abstract communication, but I don't think you'd have much luck communicating the concept "to me, humans are friends, so don't rob them on my behalf" across the species barrier.

Place the vending machine outside

Teach them that putting money in the vending machine dispenses crow snacks.

Practice placing dollar bills and other bits of paper around your property til they get the hang of it and figure out what works for the vending machine.

... profit?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_myna

Over the winter we tossed out a few peanuts while wearing the same baseball cap, and whistling a specific song. After awhile, the crows changed their dialogues when we walked in the area, and indeed they certainly can communicate with each-other about their environment.

We found this rather surprising, and gained a deeper appreciation for their antics. As a consequence, the birds often indicate when someone/something new is in the area.

Fascinating little creatures, =)