A new experiment found crows and ravens have a sense of fairness, just like people and dogs.
By Francie Diep Posted 02.21.2013 at 5:30 pm 8 Comments

One smart bird
One smart bird Photo by Joachim S. Müller

People, primates and dogs all react negatively when others get a better reward for doing the same work. Now a small study has found that crows and ravens dislike unfairness, too--the first time research has shown non-mammals react to inequity. Knowing which animals do and don't seem to notice unfairness (cleaner fish, for example, don't notice) helps scientists figure out how a sense of fairness evolved.

For the study, published February 20 in the journal PLoS ONE, a pair of biologists at the University of Vienna trained six carrion crows and four ravens to exchange pebble tokens for food. The researchers then created same-species pairs for a series of experiments. When the birds saw their partners getting food for free, without having to exchange tokens, they tended to exchange tokens less often. Sometimes the birds that got the short shrift even gave away tokens, but refused to take their reward.

Other research has suggested that a sense of equity evolved several times in unrelated animals, the University of Vienna researchers write. Knowing what's fair is linked to cooperative behavior in species, they say, and that makes sense with crows and ravens, which form alliances and share food and information.

A paranoid soul might take this as evidence that crows are totally capable of forming a The Birds-style rebellion. Members of the Corvus genus have previously been shown to form hooked tools, use a tool on another tool to get a piece of meat, watch other birds caching foods in order to steal that food later, cache in private (wouldn't you if you were surrounded by thieves?), and reach meat tied to the end of a string.

Watch out, UW Bothell.

8 Comments

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vt007
02/21/13 at 7:05 pm

all animal species have an alike embryo, so why the fuck not having the same world views... ^^

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No facts, No response...

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dkella
02/22/13 at 11:07 am

If you have ever walked amongst a murder of 500 crows, you might have a better inking of how smart they actually are. Wonderful creatures, and smarter then many dogs too. (especially pocket dogs)

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manysounds
02/22/13 at 1:58 pm

I'm amazed that PopularScience can't keep spam out of their comments.

Crows are awesome.

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kouprey1
02/22/13 at 5:52 pm

Interesting article. Unfortunately they used a photo of a raven (shaggy throat feathers and photogrphers own site
confirn it as a raven) to illustrate it. Very different birds in both intelligence and behavior. Akin to having an article on chimpanzees and posting a picture of a human.

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snowsim
02/23/13 at 6:00 pm

kouprey1 Please read the article or even just the headline before you comment so dismissively.
"A new experiment found crows and ravens have a sense of fairness, just like people and dogs."
" trained six carrion crows and four ravens"
So yeah, a raven photo works just fine.

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hezekiahkeane
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