Are Crows As Smart As Humans?

We've been told that crows are as smart as most children. Is there any truth to this?

Read More:
Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems
"In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces."

Crows are no bird-brains: Neurobiologists investigate neuronal basis of crows' intelligence
"Scientists have long suspected that corvids -- the family of birds including ravens, crows and magpies -- are highly intelligent. Now, neurobiologists have demonstrated how the brains of crows produce intelligent behavior when the birds have to make strategic decisions."
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[dumyjobby]

Crows are so smart that thay are probably commenting on this video right now. Nobody cnow on the internet that you are a crow

[qqq]

Crows did my taxes this year. They know their stuff.

[dzarko]

Crows are intelligent.

Crows are descendants of dinosaurs.

Ancient dinosaur civilization confirmed.

[LilChuunosuke]

Well, yeah, they are smarter. Has nobody heard the story of Joshua Klein?
He left out a vending machine (not like the ones you would see in your cafeteria or something, less pretty and a lot simpler than that) in a junkyard and there was a tray filled with peanuts and coins. He left it like that for a while so the crows would learn there was peanuts there and get used to seeing the coins with them. Then, he takes away all the peanuts. This makes the birds mad, until they find a slot in the machine and when they put a coin in, a peanut will come out. After that, he does not leave coins near the coin slot, but instead on the ground in front of it. The crows will learn to pick up the coins put them in the machine for peanuts.
Finally, there are no coins in front of the machine. This man now actually has an army of crows, flying around New York city, bringing him spare change from sidewalks and fountains, as long as he makes sure to provide them with peanuts.

[TheStigma]

I want to share something amazing I witnessed personally regarding crows in my home-town:

In my city we recently reinstated the light rail public transport system. One day while on my way home I was waiting for a bus close to where the tracks were - and I noticed a crow sitting by himself by the road, just looking down the road occasionally. I thought nothing of it (aside from noting it as somewhat unusual behavior) until after the light rail carriage had passed and I saw him dart to the tracks and pick something up from the little hollow where the tracks lay (the tracks are inside a small indentation in the road). Then the flew off and returned a minute or two later - with some sort of shell in his beak (the ocean is close by).

I was amazed to see him put the shell in the same place as he had picked something up earlier - and then post up at the same position - looking down the road. Then it hit me. He was using the light rail carriage to crush the hard shells! There was no mistaking it. He was being systematic and seemed to even roughly know when the carriage would pass - and was scouting for it.

I thought this was pretty amazing. I've read about crows in Tokyo being observed doing the same king of thing by dropping shells from bridges into traffic to have them run over - but I think was an even more sophisticated operation because it was so predictable/repeatable. I have no doubt that this crow had doe this hundreds of times before by observing how methodical and practiced he was going about it - even being picky about the orientation of the shell in the track-indentation in order to achieve the result he wanted.

[obsidiancakes]

Now I'm imagining a crow just laughing at our feeble attempts to understand them

[chronicleone]

I am getting sick and tired of these super smart animals not paying taxes and getting to live where ever they want.

[jon]

Night gathers and now my watch... oh wait

[Wrendojin]

i've seen crows at work in the parking lot picking up nuts, flying high and dropping them to crack them open. i wonder if i got one and cracked it open and left it there, would they befriend me? :) they recognize faces after all.

[Thumbsupurbum]

I'm starting to think a lot more birds are smarter than they get credit for. I work weekends on a golf course infested with geese. Up to 50 sometimes. I occasionally have to chase them off of the greens, tee boxes, etc. 

 They seem to have over time learned the difference from me and the golfers on the course playing. I see golfers commonly come up to 3 feet of them and they aren't too bothered. But when I start heading in their direction they freak out. (No I've never harmed them, just chase them). Even when I'm well over 100 feet away.

Also I'm pretty sure there's a mockingbird there that mimics a car alarm. Hard to be sure, definitely sounds like it though.

[OpiateX]

Used to watch ravens in Fairbanks Alaska drop nuts into the intersections of roads then sit on the traffic signal poles, wait for a car to run over it, then go pick up the parts they wanted.  It was amazing to watch.

[NinjaInConverse]

I was really creeped out when I learned that crows and ravens can actually talk like in Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem "The Raven". I always thought that the raven in the poem talked because that's what was normal in the universe the poem took place in. I never heard a crow/raven speak until I found a video just last year.

[ilovesoiboiboobies]

A friend got attacked by a group of crows because he was only feeding the crows on the ground everyday and not the ones in the tree. It got to the point where the tree crows started dropping rocks on him and attacking him and the ground crows waged war on the tree crows to defend him. Then after the crow fight the ground crows wouldn't stop following him, he thinks they wanted more food for protecting him.

[Nikitan]

In Russia we used to live in an apartment house on the sixth floor, and one of the windows was close to a tree. Crows usually sat on it and started croaking which always woke up my father early in the morning. So my father woke up one day because of the crow and shot it from a slingshot using a ball bearing. The crow was hit and landed on the ground croaking, and then it flew away. After that day not a single crow sat on that tree.

[Danny]

Wow, that's fascinating. Makes me want to feed them, and see if can get them to come into my house. Probably not, because they seem to want to fly away even quicker than pigeons do.

However, raising a few up from childhood might make them associate with you as a dog would associate with a human, which means that maybe they can be trained or even simply become companions.

[icywolf]

I saw a rave today cross the street. The raven literary looked both ways and waited for the cars to stop before crossing.

[JOHN----DOE]

Crows DO rule the world. Somewhere in your neighborhood there's a family (a "murder") of four crows (they hang around in fours except when they gather in large groups in the winter). Locate them. Watch what they do. THEY are the ones who run your neighborhood. You are incidental noise located on the ground. I was foolish enough to catch the attention of the local head crow--made eye contact and spoke--and he was affronted. Now, every time I go outside, he yells at me and they all fly off. I am targeted.

[mrdave]

This lady is such a nerd! Wait. Doesn’t that make ME more of a nerd finding this video? Word! Lol. Thank you.

[sgtsnakeeyes]

like 5 minutes ago i was looking out the window and a crow was standing next to a squirrel burying an acorn. when the squirrel left the crow immediately just walked over and peaked it back out.

[anto]

Best intro of the year! "turns out murder can be pretty scary"xD