Watch this video demonstrate just how freakishly intelligent crows are

'Bird brain' is a common insult to mean someone is stupid, and there are some birds that surely inspired it. However, examples like the cockatoos solving complex locks and this one, with '007' the crow, show that birds are a lot smarter than most of us take them for.

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The way that 007 works his way through the puzzle, especially when he pauses to re-evaluate what he's doing with the stick, and goes back to the rocks he dropped to use them to complete the next stage, is remarkable. You can imagine at that moment, the thoughts "Wait a second ... I should be doing something with those rocks ... oh right, the thing that drops the larger stick," pass through his mind!

Even more amazing is that the crow had no practice at all with the sequence, just the individual parts, and had only been part of the study for three months! To see how each of the pieces relates to the others, and work everything out to gain his prize, with that little training, shows just how smart the bird really is.

(H/T PopSci)

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