What is the smartest kind of bird?

Two hundred years ago, people used to think that humans were the smartest animals because we were the only ones who used tools. Then scientists discovered that chimpanzees and other primates used them too. But few people expected to discover a species of bird that uses tools too!

What do you think the smartest birds are? Is it the parrots, which are so good at copying human speech? Or could it be pigeons, which used to carry messages back and forth between people?

It’s actually a kind of bird that farmers have been trying to chase off their fields for centuries. The smartest kind of birds are the crows!

Crows, ravens, rooks, and other members of the crow family are extremely intelligent. Crows in the wild use sticks to fish insects out of tiny cracks in logs, and some crows have even learned to bend a piece of wire into a hook to get food out of hard-to-reach places!

Other crows have learned to let humans do the work for them. In Japan, crows drop nuts into the street so cars will run over them and crack the shells. Then they eat the nuts when cars are stopped at red lights!

There is even an old Greek fable about a thirsty crow dropping stones into a jar of water to make the water rise enough to drink. The story used to be considered make-believe until scientists recently discovered that rooks can figure out how to do exactly that all on their own. They may even be better at it than primates!

Now that’s using your head!