Clever Crows Prove Aesop's Fable Is More Than Fiction


	Clever Crows Prove Aesop's Fable Is More Than Fiction

mrobert

8-8-2009 3:29 AM

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tags:

crow, rook, raven, birds, intelligence

mrobert says:

Crows, Ravens, Rooks... they are clever birds.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/568ece25-d2bd-4533-a5a3-22ab052ba988/37039AEF-5E61-4C6E-9C10-A55F4182B725/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/" href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.wired.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/"><P>Researchers presented four crows with a challenge from Aesop’s fable <A href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm#Page_34" linkindex="63">“The Crow and the Pitcher”</A>: a container of water not quite full enough for the birds to reach with their beaks. Just like Aesop’s crow, all four birds figured out how to raise the water level by dropping stones into the glass. The crows also selectively chose large pebbles over small ones, and quickly realized that dropping rocks into a container of sawdust didn’t have the same effect.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/"><P><IMG width="250" height="311" alt="aesops-crow" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/08/aesops-crow.jpg" title="aesops-crow" class="alignright size-full wp-image-8608" />“The results of these experiments provide the first empirical evidence that a species of corvid is capable of the remarkable problem-solving ability described more than two thousand years ago by Aesop,” wrote the researchers in the paper published Thursday in <EM>Current Biology</EM>. “What was once thought to be a fictional account of the solution by a bird appears to have been based on a cognitive reality.”</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/37039AEF-5E61-4C6E-9C10-A55F4182B725/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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