Since the pandemic brought my kids home from university, we’ve enjoyed a wide range of conversations. The other day, my son broached an interesting subject. “So apparently crows are capable of pondering life,” he said. I hate being a know-it-all kind of mom, but I nodded and said, “Yes, I think I saw a documentary about that.” “No, this is new information,” he said. “That’s why they just sit there alone in trees, or on fences. They’re thinking.” This somehow seems quite romantic to me. Whenever I hear something emotional or intelligent about animals, it confirms my feelings we share more than just a planet. Scientists in this case have proven crows are little black-feathered philosophers capable of conscious thought. (1)

Crows Of The Raven Family

Crows are “Corvids”, part of the raven family of birds. This seems even more poignant when you think of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Raven. The insight into a man’s conversation with a bird seemed impossible, yet new findings show this family of birds are aware of their environments. They can ponder their lives and are aware of the short-term passage of time. This, scientists suggest allows them to generate subjective experiences. (1)

German Study Of Crows

The research conducted at the University of Tubingen in Germany looked at two carrion crows. Each had electrodes monitoring their brain activity while they were shown about 20,000 light signals. During dozens of sessions, the birds learned to acknowledge visual stimuli with nods. (1)

But how does this show they are consciously thinking? Because the lights were inconsistent, it made it harder to confirm the light actually did shine. Interestingly, this led to disagreements between the two crows showing they were capable of individual, subjective experiences. (1)

Crows And Subjective Experiences

“Nerve cells that represent visual input without subjective components are expected to respond in the same way to a visual stimulus of constant intensity,” says animal physiologist Andreas Nieder of the University of Tubingen. “Our results, however, conclusively show that nerve cells at higher processing levels of the crow’s brain are influenced by subjective experience, or more precisely produce subjective experiences.” (1)

Crows And Primary Consciousness

The discovery of the crows experienced primary, or sensory, consciousness is important. Scientists believed this type of thought only exists in primates. The findings bring a whole new meaning to the term bird brain. Birds are not as dim-witted as once thought. (1)

Primary consciousness means we are aware of ourselves and our individual knowledge. However, it also means we can reflect on that knowledge. We can apply our reflections to our individual experiences. This in turn allows us to problem-solve and make decisions, something scientists already know crows can do. It’s also what I learned in the documentary I watched. (1)

Crows Appreciate Their Environment

So when you think of primary consciousness, it allows us to appreciate and interact with the world not only in the present but also with consideration and knowledge there is a past and future. This ability was believed to only apply to mammalian brains with cerebral cortexes. However, we now know avian brains have the same ability despite being smaller and smoother. (2)

Meanwhile, scientists will further pursue the crow’s way of thinking: Are they aware they are aware? (2)