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Top 16 Smartest Animals in the World

8.

Raven, Crow

Raven and crows are passerines and are found all across the globe.

Ravens Use Cars to Crack Nuts

Crows love eating nuts. To break the hard shells, they drop them from great heights. Some crows have even improved on this method: they crack nuts by letting cars run over them.


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They place the nuts on the road when the cars are stuck at a red light, and they just sit back and watch as the cars crack their shells as the light turns green. When the light turns red again, they pick up their nuts from the road.

Ravens Trick Their Fellow Ravens and Enemies

When a wolf buries a piece of meat, ravens will stare unashamedly. As soon as it’s gone, they steal its stash. Even when they’re around other ravens, they will pretend that they’re just cleaning their feathers. But they’re really watching what everyone is doing. If anyone takes their security for granted and leaves their prey unattended, another raven will go for it.

Ravens Use Tools

Ravens are able to solve problems not through accidental success but through creativity. Only ravens, octopuses and primates do this.

Example: There is a piece of meat hanging from a rod on a piece of string. There is only one solution. The raven must sit on the rod and pull the string up, step by step. Ravens solve this task first time round. It’s incredible when you remember that their brains are 40 times smaller than primates’ brains.

Raven Raven - Photo: Oleksiy Mark/Shutterstock


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