Crows Aren’t Bird-brained

Are we the smartest species on earth?

Since humans have been self-aware, we’ve drawn up a million reasons why this must be so.

With grand machines, complex languages, and beautiful art, surely we must be more mentally capable than every other critter, right?

Actually, maybe not…

As more evidence has been unearthed, we’ve discovered that we’re not that much better in the brain-department than any other species. We’re just different.

Meet the corvids, the family of birds that includes crows, ravens, and jays. In recent years, they have risen to become one of the best examples of genius outside humanity. As scientists have gotten better at researching animal intelligence, they’ve discovered corvids are an iconoclast of the human primacy hypothesis.

Quoth the Raven

Early on, we believed that forming speech was an indicator of our extraordinary intelligence. This ability now, however, is known to be common across the animal kingdom.

Corvids are particularly talented speakers! Edgar Allan Poe was on to something when he added a talking raven to his poem: