Tom is scaring the crows away.

So the moral being, don't piss off crows.

So we know that there's lots of crows.

So, this is a vending machine for crows.

Two crows are flying in the sky.

Raise crows and they'll peck your eyes out.

What a viper I have nourished in my bosom!

I am throwing stones at crows.

In fact, that's old hat for crows.

This is a vending machine for crows.

Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows

Have you ever thrown stones at crows?

And since that time, all of the crows in the neighborhood are picking up this behavior.

And crows and other corvidae, ravens, rooks and so forth, are incredibly smart birds.

Well it turns out that the babies, the New Caledonian crow babies, are fledglings.

We're seeing a population boom with crows.

I think that crows can be trained to do other things.

And this is where we see the difference between crows and other animals.

Crows, on the other hand, show up, and they try and figure it out.

And were entertained to discover that for the rest of the week, these crows, whenever these particular students walked around campus, these crows would caw at them, and run around and make their life kind of miserable.

But the story of the vending machine is a little more interesting if you know more about crows.

So, I spent the next 10 years reading about crows in my spare time.

So, it turns out we've been finding more and more that crows are really, really intelligent.

So now, students at the University of Washington that are studying these crows do so with a giant wig and a big mask.

Video Crows have become highly skilled at making a living in these new urban environments.

So what's significant about this isn't that crows are using cars to crack nuts.

Cría Cuervos () is a 1976 Spanish drama film directed by Carlos Saura.

He provides food for the livestock, and for the young ravens when they call.

He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.

It turns out that crows aren't just surviving with human beings they're actually really thriving.

And of course, we human beings are way out on the end of the distribution like the crows.

Some students went out and netted some crows, brought them in, and were weighed them, and measured them and whatnot, and then let them back out again.

If I have a little extra time, I'll tell you about a case of crow infidelity that illustrates that nicely.

So, what's significant about this to me isn't that we can train crows to pick up peanuts.

It shall be, that you shall drink of the brook. I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.

And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.

For example, in Sweden, crows will wait for fishermen to drop lines through holes in the ice.

And when the fishermen move off, the crows fly down, reel up the lines, and eat the fish or the bait.

And crows eventually come by, and eat the peanuts and get used to the machine being there.

And these crows use sticks in the wild to get insects and whatnot out of pieces of wood.

So we know that these crows are really smart, but the more I dug into this, the more I found that they actually have an even more significant adaptation.

The ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening and he drank of the brook.

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening and he drank of the brook.

And I'm talking specifically about synanthropic species, which are species that have adapted specifically for human ecologies, species like rats and cockroaches and crows.

Basically, what happens is that we put this out in a field, or someplace where there's lots of crows, and we put coins and peanuts all around the base of the machine.