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Art by Ian Ibæk Møller

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I have always loved ravens and other corvids. They are mischievous, they imitate the human voice easily, and they are often topic of folklore and mythology. Even Odin had his two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. Besides strong mythological and symbolical value attributed to Ravens, they are extremely intelligent species. Newer studies suggest that the corvid family is as intelligent as the great apes, and one of the two most intelligent families of birds.

Hugin and Muninn fly each day
over the spacious earth.
I fear for Huginn, that he come not back,
yet more anxious am I for Muninn.

A part of Grímnismál, a song from poetic Edda

Mythology and symbolism

In the past ravens were associated with many symbols. Nature of the symbols differs across cultures, and sometimes even in the same culture across the span of ages. For example in ancient texts of Hebrew Bible ravens are an example of god's gracious provision for all his creatures. Perception of the ravens changed through time. In the new era, they are viewed as the symbol of vice, while dove is seen as a symbol of virtue. The belief was that raven is one of the only three beings that mated on the ark, during the great flood and for that act it was punished.

In ancient Greece, ravens were associated with Apollo, the god of prophecy. They were god's messengers to the mortal world. Apollo’s ravens were white, but on one occasion, he sent a raven to spy on his lover Coronis. After the raven returned with the news that Coronis was unfaithful, Apollo in his fury scorched the raven. Animal’s feathers turned black and that is why all ravens are black to this day.

As ravens were associated with Apollo, they were used as a means for divination. Raven flying from east or south was considered a favorable omen. Those flying from the north or west might be considered as bringers of bad luck. The direction of the flight wasn’t the only important factor, number of ravens in the flock and their color was also considered in divination.

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Apollo with a raven

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In the lore of Tlingit, Haida and other northern Native Americans a raven was both a trickster spirit and the creator of the world. The most interesting story about the raven in Tlingit folklore is the one concerning his responsibility for placement of the Sun in the sky.

The story starts with Naas-sháki Shaan – The Old Man, who was very rich. Among his riches were three legendary boxes. One contained the stars, second contained the moon, and in the third was the sun. The raven decided to steal the stars, the moon and the sun from Naas-sháki Shaan.
He transformed himself into a hemlock needle and dropped into the water cup of the Old Man’s daughter. She became pregnant and gave birth to the raven in the form of a boy. The raven in the form of baby cried constantly until the Old Man gave him the Box of Stars. After playing with it for a while, the Raven opened the lid and let the stars escape through the chimney into the skies.
Later Raven Cried for the Box of the Moon, and after some time the Old Man blocked the chimney so the moon couldn't escape, and gave the Box to the child. Raven played with the moon for a while and then rolled it out the door from where the moon escaped into the sky.
In the end Raven cried for the Box of the Sun, and Old Man, loving his grandson gave the Box to the Raven. Raven was aware that he couldn't roll it out the door or toss it up the chimney because they were carefully watched now, so he waited for everyone to fall asleep. Once everyone was sleeping he turned into his bird form, grasped the box in his beak and flew up and out of the chimney. When he got to the sky, he opened the box to show those who don’t believe him that he has the sun. He then carried the sun high into the sky and placed it there. The sun remained in the sky ever since.

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A depiction of the Haida creation story, where Raven opens an oyster shell on the beach to find the first Humans
Sculptor: Bill Reid, University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology
Photographer: Joe Goldberg

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In Celtic mythology Morrígan ("phantom queen") was the goddess associated with war and fate. One of her roles was foretelling doom and death in battle. When she was carrying out that role she usually appeared as a raven or crow.

Finally, my favorite ravens are Huginn and Muninn, the two ravens of the Allfather Odin, the head god in the Norse Mythology. Huginn represents Odin’s thought, while Muninn represents his memory. Every day Odin sent his ravens to fly all over the Midgard (the Earth) and collect the information for him, later they would return to him and perch on Hliðskjálf (high seat of Odin from which he can see into all realms), thus keeping Odin informed of many affairs. Huginn and Muninn are often mentioned both in poetic end prose Edda (oldest manuscripts of Norse mythology) and are generally held in good regard by the old Norse peoples. They are, in fact, so important that Odin himself was often called the raven god.

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Odin sitting on Hliðskjálf, holding his spear Gungnir, flanked by his ravens Huginn and Muninn and wolves Geri and Freki

Art by Carl Emil Doepler, 1882.

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I will cover these and some of the other myths related to ravens in greater detail in my posts about specific mythologies and deities. Here they serve the purpose to demonstrate how ravens were held in great regard for ages, but they were forgotten at some point in time. People started to view them as ordinary birds and pests. Only recently science has discovered that they are in fact one of the most intelligent species in existence. With this discovery, we can conclude that their role in mythology is more than deserved.

In the rest of this article, I will cover reasons for raven’s intelligence based on their brain biology, experiments which prove that intelligence and some interesting anecdotes about ravens. If you want to read more about mythology, follow me on steemit and check out my article about Haitian Vodou here.

Intelligence

Corvids owe their huge intelligence mostly to three following factors:

• Structure of their brain and their brain size relative to body mass
• Long lifespan which allows them to accumulate knowledge throughout their life – wild corvids live 20 – 30 years
• They are very social species which allows them to accumulate knowledge by learning from others

Experiments

Some proofs of raven's intelligence comes from brain scans and anatomy of the brain, but a lot of them were discovered through experiments conducted with ravens. They are amazing puzzle solvers and sophisticated tool makers. They are also one of the two known species that craft and use tools in the wild. We know that they are able to reason and solve problems using intelligence by giving them puzzles in the environment they are not used to.

One of the experiments with ravens involved a long tube with a small basket at the bottom which ravens couldn’t reach. Each raven participating in the experiment was given a piece of straight wire. All of them had similar reactions, and all of them successfully got to their snack.
At first, raven tried to pull the basket using the friction between the basket and the tube. It quickly realized it wouldn’t be able to pull it out that way, and without further experimentation raven stepped on the wire with a talon and used the beak to create a small hook. Raven than hooked the basket and pulled it out. It is a puzzle that most of the 4-year-old children fail to solve as the problem solving part of the brain isn’t developed enough at that age. It is a clear indicator of raven’s intelligence. Species without a large forebrain and spatial intelligence wouldn’t be able to realize something like that without long conditioning.

They understand the basics of geometry and physics of the fluids. There was a set of experiments involving water and food in a tube. Ravens had to put pebbles in the tube to raise the water level in the tube in order to reach a piece of meat floating on top of the water. Experiments showed us that ravens understood that only the volume of the pebble is important in raising the water level as they ignored the heavier pebbles and used only the light ones. They also quickly realized how it makes more sense to put pebbles in a thinner tube with less water than in a wider tube with a lot of water inside. Those and many other experiments show us how ravens are able to distinguish weight, shape, and material and understand how they can apply each of these factors to their benefit.

I couldn’t find the video of this experiment done with a raven, but here is the video of the same experiment done with a crow. They are part of the same family of birds, and they are both equally intelligent, so this one should serve the same purpose :)

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Another experiment done with ravens took time over a span of eight years. It was done to determine their face recognition abilities and their memory. Scientists from the Wildlife Science department at the University of Washington put on a mask and went around the campus trying to capture the ravens. Ravens don’t like to be captured and this instilled a strong emotional response in ravens. Ravens didn’t change their behavior towards other humans on the campus, but whenever someone wore the mask they would move away, follow him from a distance and caw at him as if scolding and driving him away. When scientist used a very similar mask to that one, most of the ravens realized it is not the same “person” and treated it as any other person, only a few dimmer birds had reactions to that mask.

After eight years scientists again put the mask on and walked around the campus. An interesting thing happened then. Ravens had the same reaction as 8 years ago. The significant discovery of this experiment was that ravens teach each other about things that are in distant in space or time. We know that because most of the ravens this time weren’t even born when the first part of the experiment was conducted. This was still not enough to prove the teaching part, so another experiment was conducted. A few ravens were captured and a person wearing a completely different mask entered the room with ravens holding a dead raven. Ravens were later released from captivity and a few weeks later someone wearing that mask walked down the campus. Instantly, all the ravens had hostile reactions to the person, although they have never seen that mask before. This shows an amazing level of sophistication in raven’s language and teaching abilities.

Brain biology

It is easy to fall into a trap of thinking that large brain alone means huge intelligence. It is important to understand that the brain has to regulate all bodily functions. Animals with larger organs require a larger brain to function properly. An important factor that determines intelligence is the brain size relative to the body mass, and corvids have huge brains relative to their body mass. Other important aspect of the brain of the corvids is its structure. Similar humans, corvids have large forebrain. The forebrain is used to assess the information from sensory organs. In addition forebrain’s function is problem-solving as well as other processes such as imitation and insight.

Experiments I described earlier show us that corvids are known problem solvers. Even if you haven't heard about those experiments before, you might have noticed them solving some problems they encounter in their native environment. If you live in an area populated with ravens you might have noticed how they use cars to crack walnuts too hard for them to break. I regularly see ravens throwing walnuts on the road next to the traffic lights and waiting for the light to turn red so they can pick up their cracked walnuts.

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Photography by Charlie Hamilton James

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Corvids have very developed hippocampus. Hippocampus is a part of the brain that plays an important role in episodic, declarative and spatial memory. It is also responsible for navigation and approach-avoidance conflict processing. This allows corvids to assess the information they have accumulated through their long life (episodic memory) and use their forebrain to solve the problem at hand.

Their developed hippocampus allows them to memorize facts (declarative memory), but why is that so important?
I already mentioned how corvids are social birds, and that they developed a complicated language. They are also one of only four known living species (in addition to bees, ants and humans) who have demonstrated the capacity to communicate about objects or events that are distant in space or time from the communication itself. When you put those three things together the result is that corvids are able to memorize facts, and use their complicated language to teach them to their wide social circle and younger generations of their flock.

Approach-avoidance conflict processing essentially means that corvids are capable to avoid short term gains and aim for the long term gains. When species without this part of a brain gain information they react based on the information right away. Corvids, like humans, have the ability to restimulate the part of the brain that was first stimulated by the information and reconsider it instead of reacting on it right away.

Finally, they have developed Amygdala which is the part of the brain with the role of formation and storage of for memories associated with emotional events. It allows corvids to memorize, places, events and places which invoked specific emotions (for example fear, by trying to capture them, or satisfaction because they found a lot of food at the location) and warn other members of their flock.

Personality and anecdotes

Ravens are mischievous, social and very playful beings. They also easily remember other ravens. They usually have only one mate and they are exceptionally faithful to that partner. In the flock, they have a clear hierarchy. Each raven knows what his place, and what every other raven's place is in that hierarchy. Their memory and recognition extends on other species as well.

There is an anecdote of an old lady who was feeding ravens every day. Ravens started to knock on her window and she found that adorable and started giving them more food. Ravens continued to gather around her house and watched what humans do. They soon realized what doorbell is used for and soon started landing doorknob and ringing the bell with their beaks. Although the lady loved the ravens, her husband didn't share the sentiment. Ravens irritated him, so he usually threw rocks and other stuff at them.
Ravens liked the old lady, but didn't like her husband, and they showed it clearly, every day they landed on the car and craped all over his side of the windshield. What is truly remarkable is that when they changed sides, ravens noticed and they changed side of the windshield they were craping on. :)

Another indicator of raven's intelligence is the ability to have fun, just for the sake of having a good time. Lots of animals play, but they mostly play to learn abilities they need to survive (you can notice that if you watch cats playing). But raven's playing is different. It is more similar to our reasons for playing. We play to get the endorphin rush. It is clear ravens do as well, we know that because they often do things that give them no practical knowledge or skills. One popular way to have fun among the ravens is snowboarding. Reports of ravens snowboarding on can lids and bottles come from all around the world.

Besides using what they find in nature they also craft their own toys. As far as I know (and I have been searching for other species that do that) they are the only animal species who do that.

Here is a video of another member of the corvid family (a crow) snowboarding. I tried to find a raven snowboarding for you but this relative of ravens was too adorable to ignore.

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Ravens alongside parrots are the two bird species capable of learning human words. It is important to understand that they don't just imitate the words, they also understand what those words are used for. There is another great anecdote about ravens that explains just how much they understand. In a dog was barking wildly. The owner of the dog went to the backyard to check out what is going on there. He heard a voice calling: "Come boy! Here you go, boy! Come, boy!" He went to the street to check who is messing with his dog, only to find a raven perched on the branch provoking the dog. For the next few weeks, the raven continued flying around the neighborhood and rounding local dogs. He would then bring the dogs to the local college and hold them at bay. When students finished their classes, the raven would fly through students exiting the college building, and the dogs ran after the raven. It is still not clear if raven did it to steal an occasional sandwich in the chaos or just because it was fun. Whatever the reason, it shows such level of ingenuity that I wouldn't believe the story if I didn't hear it in the TED talk by John Marzluff, Professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington.

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If I haven't made you fall in love with these mischievous creatures, I hope I have at least piqued your interest about ravens. Next time you are passing by a raven consider offering it a snack, maybe you will get a new drinking buddy. If not, at least you might avoid getting your windshield desecrated. :D

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