June 10, 2026
Murder Most Clever
Who's the Smartest Corvid?
Crows are winning the bird IQ war, and the comments are equal parts amazed and horrified
TLDR: The big takeaway is that crows and ravens are astonishing problem-solvers, using tools, tricks, and even humans to get food. In the comments, people swung between admiration and alarm, joking about crow genius while arguing over whether some of these birds sound brilliant, brutal, or both.
The article itself is basically a greatest hits album of crow chaos: birds diving into mine shafts to yank out bats, tag-teaming an otter to steal its fish, turning fence splinters into tools, and even using humans as accidental accomplices while raiding goslings. Ravens, meanwhile, are apparently the wilderness version of crime masterminds, following gunshots, wolf howls, and distress calls straight to an easy meal. If you thought “birdbrain” meant dumb, the crowd reaction was a full-on not so fast.
And oh, the comments came in hot. One reader dropped the deadpan joke, “Probably Grip?” — a delightfully chaotic answer to the whole “smartest corvid” question. Others were less amused and more unsettled, especially by the story of crows seemingly driving a smaller bird into a city window. One commenter called that behavior “especially cruel,” which pretty much captures the thread’s mini-existential crisis: are crows lovable geniuses, or tiny feathered schemers with a mean streak?
Then came the personal stories, and that’s where the internet really lit up. One commenter shared a neighborhood tale about city crows holding grudges after people threw things at them, feeding the long-running folklore that crows remember faces and settle scores. Another proudly reported that a backyard crow learned a homemade food signal in just two days, which turned the whole discussion into part science chat, part accidental fan club. The overall vibe: terrified respect with a side of “we may have underestimated the goth pigeons.”
Key Points
- •The excerpt ranks the corvid species with the most recorded innovations, led by the Eurasian carrion crow and followed by the common raven, Eurasian magpie, house crow, and American crow.
- •Observed American crow behaviors in the article include entering a mine shaft to retrieve a bat, cooperative theft of a fish from an otter, exploiting window-strike casualties in Toronto, tool manufacture, and apparent washing of food.
- •Observed common raven behaviors include scavenging after wolf and human kills and responding to cues such as gunshots, wolf howls, and distress calls associated with prey or carrion.
- •The article cites field observations from Montana, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Kenya to document corvid feeding strategies and problem-solving behavior.
- •Lefebvre argues that tool use is rare and likely costly, suggesting corvids may prefer simpler and more reliable solutions before turning to more demanding innovations.