Utopia Talk / Politics / Ravens

swordtail Anarchist Prime	Wed Oct 23 22:12:02 10 Fascinating Facts About Ravens Joy Lanzendorfer Edgar Allan Poe knew what he was doing when he used the raven instead of some other bird to croak out “nevermore” in his famous poem. The raven has long been associated with death and dark omens, but the real bird is somewhat of a mystery. Unlike its smaller cousin the crow, not a lot has been written about this remarkable bird. Here are 10 fascinating facts about ravens. 1. Ravens are one of the smartest animals. When it comes to intelligence, these birds rate up there with chimpanzees and dolphins. In one logic test, the raven had to get a hanging piece of food by pulling up a bit of the string, anchoring it with its claw, and repeating until the food was in reach. Many ravens got the food on the first try, some within 30 seconds. In the wild, ravens have pushed rocks on people to keep them from climbing to their nests, stolen fish by pulling a fishermen’s line out of ice holes, and played dead beside a beaver carcass to scare other ravens away from a delicious feast. If a raven knows another raven is watching it hide its food, it will pretend to put the food in one place while really hiding it in another. Since the other ravens are smart too, this only works sometimes. 2. Ravens can imitate human speech. In captivity, ravens can learn to talk better than some parrots. They also mimic other noises, like car engines, toilets flushing, and animal and birdcalls. Ravens have been known to imitate wolves or foxes to attract them to carcasses that the raven isn’t capable of breaking open. When the wolf is done eating, the raven gets the leftovers. 3. Europeans often saw ravens as evil in disguise. Many European cultures took one look at this large black bird with an intense gaze and thought it was evil in the flesh … er, feather. In France, people believed ravens were the souls of wicked priests, while crows were wicked nuns. In Germany, ravens were the incarnation of damned souls or sometimes Satan himself. In Sweden, ravens that croaked at night were thought to be the souls of murdered people who didn’t have proper Christian burials. And in Denmark, people believed that night ravens were exorcized spirits, and you’d better not look up at them in case there was a hole in the bird’s wing, because you might look through the hole and turn into a raven yourself. 4. Ravens have been featured in many myths. Cultures from Tibet to Greece have seen the raven as a messenger for the gods. Celtic goddesses of warfare often took the form of ravens during battles. The Viking god, Odin, had two ravens, Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory), which flew around the world every day and reported back to Odin every night about what they saw. The Chinese said ravens caused bad weather in the forests to warn people that the gods were going to pass by. And some Native American tribes worshipped the raven as a deity in and of itself. Called simply Raven, he is described as a sly trickster who is involved in the creation of the world. 5. Ravens are extremely playful. The Native Americans weren’t far off about the raven’s mischievous nature. They have been observed in Alaska and Canada using snow-covered roofs as slides. In Maine, they have been seen rolling down snowy hills. They often play keep-away with other animals like wolves, otters, and dogs. Ravens even make toys—a rare animal behavior—by using sticks, pinecones, golf balls, or rocks to play with each other or by themselves. And sometimes they just taunt or mock other creatures because it’s funny. 6. Ravens do weird things with ants. They lie in anthills and roll around so the ants swarm on them, or they chew the ants up and rub their guts on their feathers. The scientific name for this is called “anting.” Songbirds, crows, and jays do it too. The behavior is not well understood; theories range from the ants acting as an insecticide and fungicide for the bird to ant secretion soothing a molting bird’s skin to the whole performance being a mild addiction. One thing seems clear, though: anting feels great if you’re a bird. 7. Ravens use “hand” gestures. It turns out that ravens make “very sophisticated nonvocal signals,” according to researchers. In other words, they gesture to communicate. A study in Austria found that ravens point with their beaks to indicate an object to another bird, just as we do with our fingers. They also hold up an object to get another bird’s attention. This is the first time researchers have observed naturally occurring gestures in any animal other than primates. 8. Ravens are adaptable. Evolutionarily speaking, the deck is stacked in the raven’s favor. They can live in a variety of habitats, from snow to desert to mountains to forests. They are scavengers with a huge diet that includes fish, meat, seeds, fruit, carrion, and garbage. They are not above tricking animals out of their food—one raven will distract the other animal, for example, and the other will steal its food. They have few predators and live a long time: 17 years in the wild and up to 40 years in captivity. 9. Ravens show empathy for each other. Despite their mischievous nature, ravens seem capable of feeling empathy. When a raven’s friend loses in a fight, they will seem to console the losing bird. They also remember birds they like and will respond in a friendly way to certain birds for at least three years after seeing them. (They also respond negatively to enemies and suspiciously to strange ravens.) Although a flock of ravens is called an “unkindness,” the birds appear to be anything but. 10. Ravens roam around in teenage gangs. Ravens mate for life and live in pairs in a fixed territory. When their children reach adolescence, they leave home and join gangs, like every human mother’s worst nightmare. These flocks of young birds live and eat together until they mate and pair off. Interestingly, living among teenagers seems to be stressful for the raven. Scientists have found higher levels of stress hormones in teenage raven droppings than in the droppings of mated adults. It’s never easy being a teenage rebel. October 23, 2013 - 2:00pm Read the full text here: http://men...cts-about-ravens#ixzz2ibbAOk65 --brought to you by mental_floss!
Cloud Strife Member	Wed Oct 23 22:22:14 Ravens up.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Wed Oct 23 22:32:14 11. Ravens promote Obamacare for money.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Wed Oct 23 23:09:26 Super Bowl champ Baltimore Ravens getting paid $130,000 to promote Obamacare By PAUL BEDARD | OCTOBER 23, 2013 AT 4:28 AM Despite a decision by the NFL to ignore the administration's pleas to promote Obamacare, the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens have decided to go all in -- in exchange for a $130,000 contract, according to documents unearthed by a public watchdog group. MORE: http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2537602
pillz Member	Wed Oct 23 23:50:06 And what does that have to do with this thread? Absolutely nothing.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Wed Oct 23 23:55:10 THREAD TITLE = RAVENS
pillz Member	Thu Oct 24 00:29:30 And yet the topic of the thread has nothing to do with the Raven's football team, and even less to do with their contract to promote Obama care. Funny how that works.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Thu Oct 24 00:35:53 I would not say the thread has 'nothing' to do with the team. After all, the name *IS* the same. Now, if the thread title was, The Birds Called Ravens, I would not have posted what I did.
McKobb Member	Thu Oct 24 00:57:55 My grandmother had a bluejay she rescued as a chick when her cat knocked down the nest. Tweety-pie learned to say it's name and a dozen or so words. Pretty awesome to hear it talk.
Forwyn Member	Thu Oct 24 01:24:18 The thread has nothing to do with the team. The title could be implied, but the context of the post makes it clear.
Cloud Strife Member	Thu Oct 24 02:11:58 Ravens, the smart animal, support Obamacare.
smart dude Member	Thu Oct 24 04:30:14 Lol hot rod is such a hack
WilliamTheBastard Member	Thu Oct 24 04:48:23 I love 'em. Often leave food for them on the balcony and watch them calmly strutting around on the other side of the window teasing the cat. I've toyed with the idea of trying to befriend one, but the cat is not in agreement
patom Member	Thu Oct 24 04:49:26 A friend of mine has a starling that talks and imitates the ring tone of the cell phone. Years ago she had a dove that lived 12 or 13 years. It never talked but did boss the dogs around.
WilliamTheBastard Member	Thu Oct 24 04:51:34 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSEd6O0bBFs
pillz Member	Fri Oct 25 11:40:03 Bird's Tool Use Called 'Amazing' Charles Q. Choi | August 06, 2009 08:06am ET Just like in Aesop's fable, scientists now find that crows and their relatives might indeed learn to drop stones in pitches to raise the height of water inside, in this case to bring a tasty, floating worm within reach. Credit: Chris Bird. This suggests the fanciful millennia-old tale might actually have been based on fact. In Aesop's fable, "the crow and the pitcher," a thirsty crow dropped stones in a pitcher to raise the water level and quench its thirst. Past experiments have shown that crows and their relatives — altogether known as corvids — are indeed "remarkably intelligent, and in many ways rival the great apes in their physical intelligence and ability to solve problems," said researcher Christopher Bird at the University of Cambridge in England. Smart as primates? In recent years, scientists revealed that orangutans were able to use water as a tool, much as in the crow and pitcher fable, spitting water into a tube to bring a peanut within their grasp. Researcher Nathan Emery, a comparative psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, noted those experiments were a challenge to see if crows were capable of the same feat. Bird and Emery tested four adult rooks — intelligent birds belonging to the corvid family — with a clear plastic tube 6 inches high (15 cm) filled partly with water and large and small stones. These rooks had previously shown experience using and manufacturing tools, such as making hooks out of wire to pull in a bucket containing food, or employing sticks and stones to release a trap door to deposit a meal. All four rooks lived up to the fable. Rooks named “Cook” and “Fry” were successful on their first attempt, and “Connelly” and “Monroe” took two tries. "The behavior of the rooks reported in the paper is amazing," said biologist Natacha Mendes at Institute of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research in Magdeburg, Germany, who did not participate in this study. (Mendes and her colleagues performed the experiments where orangutans mimicked the crow and pitcher fable.) The birds proved highly accurate, placing in only the precise number of stones needed to raise the water level to a reachable height. Instead of trying to get the worm after each stone was dropped, they apparently estimated the number required from the outset and waited until the time was right. The rooks selected larger stones over smaller ones for maximum effect. "We've now found in many cases that the crows perform as well or even outperform the apes in these sort of tasks," Emery told LiveScience. In the future, the researchers would like to vary aspects of the experiments — for instance, using birds that have no prior tool-use or tool-making experience, or using liquids that don't act like water, or using materials that do or don't float. Could babies do it? Also, they will not only test other species of corvids, such as Eurasian jays, but humans as well. "It's not clear to me that even humans could do this without any knowledge of the properties of water or stones," Emery said. "We will therefore be giving the task to young infants." Calling the rooks "feather apes," Mendes wondered what would happen if the researchers used large light stones and small heavier stones instead. "Would rooks be able to appreciate other physical properties of tools — e.g. weight — other than size?" Despite the impressive abilities the rooks demonstrated here, they are not thought to use tools in the wild at all. "Wild tool use appears to be dependent on motivation," Bird said. "Rooks do not use tools in the wild because they do not need to, not because they can't. They have access to other food that can be acquired without using tools." As Bird noted, that fits nicely with Aesop's maxim: "Necessity is the mother of invention." Bird and Emery detailed their findings online August 6 in the journal Current Biology. http://www...-bird-tool-called-amazing.html
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