In folk ideas, crows have long been considered ominous and devilish birds associated with the world of the dead, the souls of sinners and the underworld.
In Ukraine and the Balkans, there is a legend about a raven cursed or punished by God (option: Noah). Released from the ark to find out if the flood was over, he did not return. As punishment, he is given black plumage, and he is doomed to devour carrion.
According to Ovid, Apollo learned from a raven about the betrayal of his beloved nymph and, in grief, made him black. The raven and the crow were considered prophetic birds, and depending on which side their croaking was heard from, it was considered either as a favorable or as an unfavorable sign. Cicero, who wrote that "Jupiter ordered the raven to croak on the left, and the raven on the right," according to legend, the raven predicted death.
The Arabs call the raven Abu Zakir, which means "Father of omens." The supreme god of Scandinavian mythology Odin, associated with the kingdom of the dead and wars, is accompanied by two wise prophetic birds - the ravens Hugin and Munin.
Long before Poe immortalized the raven in his famous poem The Raven in 1844, the Old Testament Jews in Leviticus recommended that they abhor "every raven of its kind." The family of corvids, or ravens (Corvidae), widespread on almost all continents, includes black and gray crows, rook, jackdaw, jay, common raven, common and blue magpie, and kiksha. More than 120 different bird species in total.
Bird watchers consider the whole family to be the most intelligent of birds. But when some scientists insist on the almost human mind of ravens, they are greatly mistaken. Ravens are much smarter than humans!
In 2002, the scientific journal Science published the results of a study, from which it followed that the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) managed to shape a piece of wire into a hook in order to extract food from a narrow place. Small children could not cope with such a puzzle and did not compete with our feathered friends.
Even more surprising were the experiments of Russian scientists carried out in the laboratory of physiology and genetics of behavior, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University. An article by three Russian researchers has appeared in the journal Current Biology. The purpose of the experiments was to test to what extent the gray crows living in Moscow are able to classify objects into certain categories: "friend or foe", "edible-inedible", "dangerous-not dangerous".
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First, in front of the two crows, two feeders were placed, covered with cards. On the sample card, the image was similar to one of the selection cards. The crow threw off one of the cards with its beak, but found a mealworm larva in the feeder only if the image on this card matched the sample. Soon, quick-witted birds, without additional training, were able to distinguish features such as geometric shape, color or size of figures.
At the next stage, for the first time, the ability of crows to identify similarities by analogy was investigated. The experiment was complicated by the fact that it was necessary to choose not by complete similarity, but by analogy. If the sample card had two identical squares, then the crows had to choose exactly the same card. A card with two different sized circles does not count. This turned out to be a wonder for the entire scientific world.
Further and even more amazing! It turned out that crows do not just talk with their relatives, but can express many different shades with their "kar": tenderness and happiness, anger and surprise. One of the websites has information about the raven language and whether they even have dialects. In captivity, crows learn to speak better than parrots.
In addition, these polyglots make special sounds to attract wolves, so that these predators butcher carrion, which is not on the beak of the crows themselves. These birds are great at working in a team. However, they do not give a descent to their offenders or those who deceived them during the experiment.
Until recently, this degree of cooperation was noted only in elephants and chimpanzees. And one more amendment was made by ornithologists to the famous fable of Aesop "The Crow and the Fox". The Russian reader is familiar with it in Krylov's presentation.
So, a real crow would never have done such a stupid thing as “croaking at all the crow's throat” and losing a piece of cheese. And if the fox still had the prey, then the crow would do everything to take it away with the help of its relatives.
Igor Bukker