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Ravens understand simple math and can count.
They use tools and are empathetic.
The birds ask for help from others and can plan ahead.
Sometimes ravens even behave amazingly human: As single they feel lonely every now and then and then meet up with other bachelors - similar to us.
The birds can even get paranoid.
Because they have the ability of the so-called Theory of Mind.
This means they recognize what is going on in others and can compare this mental state with their own.
In short, ravens are pretty intelligent animals.
But how does it compare to the extremely clever great apes?
Which of the two is the wiser head?
Researchers at the University of Osnabrück and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology wanted to answer these questions.
Source: WascherC
For their study, which they published in the journal “Scientific Reports”, the cognitive biologists working with Professor Simone Pika put the physical and social skills of a total of eight common ravens to the test at the age of four, eight, twelve and 16 months.
To do this, they have adapted a series of tests originally developed for primates to birds, which, unlike monkeys, have no hands but a beak.
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In two test parts, the ravens first had to solve nine tasks from the field of physical intelligence.
This included spatial thinking and an understanding of sets and causal chains.
To find out, for example, whether the birds know where to find food, the scientists used what is known as the shell game: They hid a treat under a mug and moved it back and forth between others.
The ravens should then show with their beak under which the treat was.
In the second part of the series of experiments, the researchers tested the social intelligence of the black poultry.
For example, they had to prove whether they understand human gestures and directions and can interpret them correctly.
The scientists also examined how empathic the animals are.
The result: When it comes to intelligence, there's a tie between ravens and great apes.
Source: Getty Images / Anup Shah
The birds did about as well as the primates on both physical and social tasks.
According to the scientists, the abilities of the ravens to assess and understand quantities and relationships are particularly impressive.
But their social intelligence is in no way inferior to that of chimpanzees, gorillas and co.
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Amazingly, however, the ravens did not do so well when it came to spatial thinking - that is to say, of all things, with a skill that they should be particularly good at.
Because the birds are pretty good flight artists and perform impressive maneuvers in the air.
They also create hiding places for food or plunder the supplies of their conspecifics.
The poor performance in this area could also be due to their competitive social life.
For example, ravens try to deliberately deceive their conspecifics when hiding food if they feel they are being watched.
They may have felt caught by the researchers during the experiments and therefore deliberately typed the wrong result in order to fool them.
Source: Getty Images / 500px Prime / John Cobb
Another result of the study: the intelligence of ravens matured early on.
The four-month-old ravens performed hardly worse in the tests than their older conspecifics.
This could be due to the fact that the birds fledged and independent early on, so they have to be able to assert and assert themselves against others at a young age.
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The conclusion of the researchers:
In summary, the experiments at hand show that the cognitive performance of our ravens in similar tasks was comparable to that of adult great apes.
Extract from the study
Ravens have also developed a complex neural system for higher intellectual abilities, although the brain of birds is completely different from that of mammals.