You might not have noticed but there's been quite a lot about COVID on @Twitter lately. For a change of pace, here's a thread about CORVIDS (i.e., crows, ravens, etc.).

First up, a crow playing in snow. Play is common in intelligent species - and crows are extremely intelligent.

It sounds like a sci-fi film plot: A lineage of dinosaurs survives the comet and evolves ultra-high intelligence. But that's exactly what actually happened. Birds are dinosaurs. And some birds – corvids among them – have primate-level cognitive abilities. http://cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(16)00042-5

Birds don't have a cortex, so how do they achieve their primate-level smarts? One suggestion is that they've got primate-like numbers of neurons squeezed into their tiny bird brains. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154616302637

An example of corvid intelligence: A New Caledonian crow figures out how to retrieve an out-of-reach treat floating in a water-filled tube.

Video:

Article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092895

Another example: New Caledonian crows craft hooks out of sticks, which they then use to "fish" for grubs.

Video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1998324276848367

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0429-7

For more on the cognitive abilities of corvids and other animals, check out @feathered_ape's website here: https://featheredape.com/ 

...and his book, Bird Brain: An Exploration of Avian Intelligence https://www.amazon.com/Bird-Brain-Exploration-Avian-Intelligence/dp/0691165173 https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/867163586665168896

To learn more about the science of corvids, check out Kaeli Swift's website ( https://corvidresearch.blog/ ) and Twitter feed ( @corvidresearch).

The thread below is a great place to start https://twitter.com/corvidresearch/status/964562544084975616

Another great source for corvid science (and COVID science) is @CT_Bergstrom (website: http://ctbergstrom.com/index.html ).

This thread is particularly good (look at that cute little grumpy baby crow face!) https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1141543265440636928