
How to tell a raven from a crow (2012) - souterrain
https://www.audubon.org/news/how-tell-raven-crow
======
hirundo
Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such
that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their
humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we
were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National
Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature.

Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The mostly likely
explanation is that I had a kind of moral hallucination. But it's changed the
way I've seen ravens since. I attribute self awareness to them. When they caw
what I hear is laughing ... at a ground bound inferior like me.

Reading _Mind_of_the_Raven_ only reinforced this feeling.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven)

~~~
ZhuanXia
Scott Alexander has a good post on bird intelligence here:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/25/neurons-and-
intelligen...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/25/neurons-and-intelligence-
a-birdbrained-perspective/)

Though they have much smaller brains, there is evidence to suggest that their
brains are 10x more computationally dense.

~~~
djmips
Birds are on a better process.

~~~
anoncake
Maybe cooling is also a factor, so we are constrained by our brain's surface
area.

------
reaperducer
Crazy to see this posted today. Last night my wife and I were on a reservation
in Arizona and watching the birds. She googled this very topic. Then when I
looked at HN today, here it is!

I showed it to her and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Is Facebook
listening to me?”

Then I had to explain that HN is human-powered and the chances of Big G and
Facebook and HN sharing data is pretty close to zero.

~~~
osrec
Similar spooky things happen to me with online adverts. I happened to mention
to a friend that I want to adopt a dog. Lo and behold, for the next 5 days,
all I see is dog adoption/dog food adverts. It's happened twice to me, and
both times, the ads have been so out of the ordinary from my usual ads, that I
actually took time to notice them!

I'm fairly certain Google is listening in to conversations for ad targeting. I
think your case is serendipity!

~~~
nxc18
I hear this kind of thing all the time. "Your case is serendipity, but they
were listening to me!"

Do you know why you thought about adopting a dog randomly? Are you confusing
cause and effect? Perhaps you were really being shown dog ads for six (or
sixty) days and only noticed it for five.

I say this not to dismiss the fear of recording, but to raise that recording
is kind of a lazy rationalization that tech companies probably favor over the
other, more realistic explanation.

The idea that the ads have changed your behavior without you realizing is far
more creepy. They don't have to listen to what you say because they influenced
you to say it.

~~~
osrec
Yes, I do know why I thought about adopting a dog. It's because I love dogs,
and have wanted one since I was a kid, and a really cool dog happened to walk
past my window at the time while I was at talking to my friend.

I never Google dog photos or anything dog related really. I have no real
reason to. Also, all the ads are see are usually either finance related or
tech related. The huge influx of dog adoption adverts was most certainly an
anomaly. I dismissed it the first time, but the second time, it was harder to
put it down to chance.

I could be wrong, and maybe they aren't listening in, however at this point, I
can't say with certainty that they're not. My suspicion is officially raised!

------
butterfi
I'd always heard it was a matter of a pinion... (supposedly the pinion feather
is longer in Ravens)

------
andrewl
I think the entire corvid family is fascinating. They are extremely
intelligent. Some of them not only use tools but actually _make_ tools:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence)

~~~
esilver
Corvids don’t just have the capacity for making and using tools but also
metatool use, i.e., using one tool on another [0]. In this respect their
cognition apparently exceeds many species of primates.

[0]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982207017708)

~~~
wool_gather
Interesting to note there that initially trying to use the short stick to
directly retrieve the reward is considered a mistake; I wonder how many humans
would give that a try, though.

~~~
esilver
I think it’s largely dependent on the parameters of the problem. The
researchers noted the significance of the distance between the reward, the
first tool, and the second tool.

My guess is most humans run two quick analyses: 1) what is the cost of seeing
if the short tool can be made to work and 2) what is the cost of retrieving
the more distant long tool using the short tool. Human/primate efforts would
seem to begin with tool use before escalating to metatool use.

All seven of the New Caledonian crows in the experiment engaged in metatool
use on their first attempt; only some of them successfully retrieved the
second tool but none of them trialed simple tool use.

------
p1necone
Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows
near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died
from Avian Flu. A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and,
to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The
cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.

However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of
paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws. By analyzing these paint
residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact
with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.

MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause
for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.

The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows
eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of
impending danger.

The scientific conclusion was that while all the lookout crows could say
"Cah", none could say "Truck."

------
finetuned
Birds are so awesome. They make me feel so happy. They are also so much more
elegant than anything people made that can fly, I think. I absolutely love
them.

~~~
1_player
I think you'd like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI63Rbxml5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI63Rbxml5U)

4K POV of an eagle soaring through the Alps

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Thanks. Now I need to look at this on a big screen.

------
tomcam
Ravens are huge and they make a sound that to me sounds hilariously like a
person doing a bad imitation of a crow.

~~~
rags2riches
In Swedish, the names are Korp and Kråka. The birds obviously know this and
take every chance to introduce themselves.

~~~
cgriswald
> In Swedish, the names are Korp and Kråka.

Strange. I would have guessed Huginn and Muninn.

~~~
rags2riches
Hugin and Munin means Thought and Memory. I can't imagine how that would be
onomatopoeia :)

------
Causality1
Taxonomically, ravens and crows are not distinct clades. That is to say, not
all the species we label "crows" are more closely related to each other than
they are to all of the species we label "ravens," and vice versa.

~~~
ajross
Yeah. The article seems to be a pretty dry list of traits that distinguish the
common raven and american crow, which are specific species, so it makes sense
in isolaiton. But it seems to be embracing a frame (echoed in a lot of
comments here) that "crows and ravens look similar but are very different
birds", which is basically wrong.

------
subroutine
Here's a very cool Google Creative Labs experiment that used tSNE to organize
thousands of bird chirps/songs/calls. The result is an interactive map that
groups similar bird sounds (click/tap to play any of the sounds):

[https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ai/bird-
sounds/view/](https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ai/bird-sounds/view/)

source code:

[https://github.com/googlecreativelab/aiexperiments-bird-
soun...](https://github.com/googlecreativelab/aiexperiments-bird-sounds)

~~~
drharby
I feel like these kind of cool tech demos paired with a highly motivated and
technically savvy phd student would lead to some interesting models in
research papers with accompanying demos.

~~~
juletide
On a related note, there's an app that will identify bird species based on
photos that you upload ([http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/photo-
id/](http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/photo-id/)), and it's powered by
"Visipedia", a collaboration between a Caltech and Cornell research group
([https://vision.cornell.edu/se3/projects/visipedia/?__hstc=75...](https://vision.cornell.edu/se3/projects/visipedia/?__hstc=75100365.1faf22dbc501863eea5790689e4fb775.1478881109453.1480518577615.1480622596812.13&__hssc=75100365.1.1480622596812&__hsfp=2912946381)).

I remember how nascent the tech was when they first started releasing it in
2011ish and it's _incredible_ how good it is now. Really awesome stuff.

------
joshklein
Many will have heard the collective noun for crows via the Simpsons episode
reference or otherwise (a “murder of crows”), but ravens get one of my
absolute favorites: an “unkindness of ravens”.

~~~
kzrdude
What's the real story of these supposedly normative collective nouns? They
don't seem to stem from natural development of the english language, rather
seem to have been poetically constructed at some point — is that true?

~~~
kd0amg
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_venery)

> intended as a mark of erudition of the gentlemen able to use them correctly
> rather than for practical communication

~~~
iak8god
Here's the relevant page in Archive's scan of The Book of Saint Albans:
[https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184/page/n111](https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184/page/n111)

------
mongol
In Northern Europe, the subspecies Corvus cornix, hooded crow, is easy to tell
apart from the raven due to its grey body parts. For this reason there is
never any doubt what you see, but this also has imprinted the other body
differences in my mind. I don't think it is hard to tell the black Corvus
corone from raven due to this.

~~~
OneWordSoln
They are beautiful and it almost looks like silver. I loved seeing them when I
was in Finland.

------
boulos
I’ve found this YouTube video:

[https://youtu.be/k9-wTnqIidY](https://youtu.be/k9-wTnqIidY)

more helpful, as it spends more time showing you both (and obviously you can
hear the sounds).

~~~
CasualKitty
I like how he pitches his wine video in the beginning.

------
GreeniFi
An old English farmer with a strong Dorset accent once explained the
difference to me:

“If you see a raven, and there’s only one of them, that’s a crow that is. If
you see a crow and there’s lots of them, that’s a raven, that is”.

Simple!

~~~
quibono
Shouldn't that be the other way round then, according to the article?

~~~
pxndx
That's the joke.

~~~
danlugo92
I'm not getting it

------
tyingq
There are also grackles, some of them mostly black, that are mistaken for
crows.

Easier to tell the difference if you can gauge the size. This picture with a 1
foot ruler is helpful:

[https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/uploadedImages/Content/Preventi...](https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/uploadedImages/Content/Prevention_and_Preparedness/idcu/disease/arboviral/westnile/samples/grackle/blackbirds.jpg)

------
erikig
Crows sound like “caw” or “ca-caw” and ravens sound like “nevermore”

~~~
krupan
Not "the N word!"

[https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Quoth](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Quoth)

------
tedmcory77
At the Grand Canyon National Park they told us that ravens are the only animal
allowed at wolf kills; this is because they train wolf pups while the parents
are off hunting so theyre recognized.

~~~
nyolfen
what do you mean by train wolf pups?

~~~
esilver
My guess would be that the ravens demonstrate effective scavenging behavior to
the wolf pups. Interestingly, both wolves and ravens engage in observational
learning of food acquisition behaviors [0].

I think most of us would assume that wolf pups have an innate scavenging
ability; this is probably wrong.

[0]
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aff0/dca479ca58868890d903cd...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aff0/dca479ca58868890d903cd8b1a25421cb4e4.pdf)

------
Tiktaalik
A bigger challenge is to differentiate a Northwestern Crow from an American
Crow.

> It is smaller than the American Crow and has a more nasal call, but it is so
> similar that the two may in fact be the same species.

[https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northwestern_Crow/overvi...](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northwestern_Crow/overview#)

I didn't even realize that my area had an apparently different crow than
everywhere until I bought a birding book.

~~~
juletide
Actually, recent research indicates that these two species _began_
differentiating themselves a long time ago, but their lineages have since
converged: they now interbreed freely and there's no reliable way to tell the
two species apart:
[https://twitter.com/dlslager/status/1072353359041085440](https://twitter.com/dlslager/status/1072353359041085440)

It's been really interesting to talk to birders I trust about this. The rough
consensus is, most people think they're the same species and will get merged
back together soon, but some are very attached to the distinction between the
two, haha.

Birds are so cool! I think it's fascinating that we're still learning new
things about this stuff all the time.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Hm the story from the posted tweet makes sense to me. Damn that is really
cool.

------
corradio
Sounds timely now that Games of Thrones starts again

------
borgdr
Wish I'd known this when I was randomly attacked by raven or crow in BC, then
I'd only dislike one of them.

~~~
OneWordSoln
Just because you don't understand its reasons doesn't make it a random
occurance. I'm guessing you were near a nest or a fledgling, but that's just
my non-educated guess.

Another possibility is that you looked like a former 'enemy' of crows. Crows
can remember people who mess with them for up to two years and seem to be able
to communicate that information among their peers. There is an excellent
documentary about that behavior and it may have even been about scientists in
the BC area.

They wore masks to test whether the information could be passed down from
generation to generation. They found one crow offspring that still recognized
the mask its parents had been trained on.

I believe it was called "The Intelligent World of Crows". It was excellent.

------
jjgreen
French crows are bigger than English crows, and behave rather differently. An
English crow on a pavement will hop out of the way of an approaching
pedestrian, a French crow will stand there and look at you, as if to say
"Yeah, do you want some?"

------
porjo
This article pertains to North America. In Australia there is less distinction
between crows and ravens. Australian crows/ravens are infamous for their loud
and obnoxious call precisely timed to interrupt your afternoon nap!

------
RickJWagner
"Listen closely to the birds’ calls. Crows give a cawing sound. But ravens
produce a lower croaking sound."

Also, the raven is the only one that repeats "Nevermore!'

------
geomark
Aren't ravens the birds with the Spy-vs-Spy behaviors?

------
cr4ig_
If on some midnight dreary there is suddenly a tapping, as of someone rapping,
at your chamber door...

It's probably a raven.

Nevermore.

------
projectramo
I thought I could easily tell the difference till I read this article...

------
mjcohen
I want to tell a raven from a writing desk.

------
virusduck
Ctrl-F jackdaw

...Here's the thing...

------
dajohnson89
that is the best comment section I've ever seen.

------
jimbo1qaz
Their website has Javascript which causes every single page to spend 3 seconds
stuck at a white screen before showing content. Disabling JS makes content
appear nearly instantly.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
It seems to be just you.

