Small Talk 19 - Crows
What do you suppose crows are thinking? I mean this seriously. If you take a walk on a clear winter day, you're likely to hear crows calling. It's part of the soundscape in a town like ours—the toll of a bell tower, the whistle of a train, the call of a crow. Each of these has meaning. But the crows... that's particularly interesting. So let's take a minute to consider some things we know about these legendary birds.
Crows are highly social. They typically mate for life, and enjoy the support of multigenerational families. Up to 15 crows live in a group, including the breeding pair, last-year's chicks, and older siblings and relatives. Crow families claim a territory and work together to feed the new chicks and defend against intruders and predators. Fledgling crows are the size of adults but scruffy. Their eyes are blue. Once a family settles in a territory, they remain for years, sometimes for life. So rural crows tend to remain rural, while urban crows remain in towns—and indeed ornithologists have observed different behaviors between country and city crows.
In winter, when crows are not breeding or raising chicks, they gather in greater numbers. Maybe you've seen, in the last light of a chilly day, a parade of crows flying in one direction. They're returning to their roosts high up in trees. These roosting flocks can number in the thousands and involve complex social interaction—mating pairs forming, feuds erupting. When darkness falls, they sleep deeply.
Does any of this help us understand what crows are thinking? It's easy to project on them our human values. Bravo, crows! We applaud your monogamy, your dedication to family, your assembly of crowds. But there's so much we don't understand. For example, it's still a mystery why crows remain as helpers to the family, rather than become breeding pairs on their own. But one thing we can reasonably conclude, based on the cognitive function required for such a social life, is that crows (and their cousins the ravens) are remarkably intelligent.
One famous study of crow intelligence was conducted by a team at the University of Washington, under the direction of wildlife biologist Marc Marzluff. In 2006, the researchers wore 'caveman' masks while capturing and tagging seven crows. In subsequent years, these crows scolded anyone wearing the caveman masks. But what's most amazing is that, over the years, other crows scolded people with those masks. By 2013, as many as 47 different crows showed aggressive behavior toward mask-wearers. It seems the crows had shared the knowledge among their peers and down through generations. (The PBS Nature documentary, "The Murder of Crows," explores this fascinating study.)
Like elephants and humans, crows conduct rituals for their dead. When a dead crow is discovered on the ground, other crows gather nearby. Sometimes they call raucously, other times they remain silent. The groups can be large, and may remain near the dead crow for days. One study showed that crows remember people associated with the death of a crow—when a masked person was observed holding a dead bird, the crows present scolded that person up to six weeks later. When a crow's mate dies, the surviving crow often shows subdued behavior for days. Are these crow 'funerals?' Are they mourning? To know that, we would have to know what they're thinking.
We place crows in the Corvid family of songbirds, which includes ravens and jays. They're all pretty smart—ravens perhaps most of all. In 1984, the ornithologist Bernd Heinrich observed ravens helping each other find food. When one raven found a carcass in the woods, it would call or sometimes return to its flock and show them the location of the food. It’s naive to consider this altruism, or even friendliness—but it is certain that crows and ravens are highly cooperative. They can learn to use tools, too. The New Caledonian crow uses twigs to probe tree cavities and extract grubs. Sometimes these crows modify the sticks to serve as hooks. Crows and ravens are also accomplished mimics, and can learn to repeat human words among other things. I remember sitting in my backyard in Duvall, Washington, hearing what I thought was a baby crying in the woods. On closer inspection I saw it was, of course, a crow.
In the past decade, scientists have learned a lot about bird neurology, giving new meaning to the term 'bird-brained.' The intelligence shown among corvids and parrots has been baffling, because their brains lack structures we associate with higher intelligence (like subjective consciousness—that is, perceiving things relative to your own experience). This gets technical pretty fast, outside the realm of small talk, but suffice to say, it's now apparent that bird brains are simply... different. One key distinction is that birds have remarkable density of neurons in their brains. Corvids and parrots have as many as 1-2 billion neurons in their pallia—much greater than in mammals. New studies among carrion crows show that these birds are indeed capable of subjective consciousness (which shouldn't be confused with the elusive self-consciousness, but still).
You could say that crows and ravens are the most mythologized of birds—perhaps of all animals. Native people shared legends of ravens as tricksters, healers, even creators of the world. Corvids have been portrayed as harbingers of death—most famously by Edgar Allen Poe. There are illustrations of crows among the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux, France. We humans think a lot about crows. Do they think about us?
The obvious answer is we don't know what crows are thinking. We don't even know what we mean, exactly, when we talk about 'thinking.' But is this important? It strikes me that it's more important, and more interesting, to try imagining what it's like to be a crow. That is, to show a little empathy for crows, setting aside our suppositions and biases, and recognize that life for these creatures is unimaginable but no less extraordinary. Empathy is an over-used term, but perhaps an under-served practice. And now seems like a good time for empathy, don't you think?
Have a good one,
Kipling Knox
P.S. If you're interested in learning more about crows and ravens, there are so many great books. Here are just a few: The American Crow and Common Raven by Lawrence Kilham, Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich, Ravensong by Catherin Feher-Elston, In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John Marzluff and Tony Angell
Photo credit: UW Crows, © 2025 Haley Salay
