'Look at That!' Ravens Gesture With Their Beaks to Point out Objects to Each Other

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2011) — Pointing and holding up objects in order to attract attention has so far only been observed in humans and our closest living relatives, the great apes. Simone Pika from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Thomas Bugnyar from the University of Vienna, however, now provide the first evidence that ravens (Corvus corax) also use so called deictic gestures in order to test the interest of a potential partner or to strengthen an already existing bond.

From early childhood on, children frequently use distinct gestures to draw the attention of adults to external objects. So-called deictic gestures such as "pointing" ("look here") and "holding up of objects" ("take this") are used by children for the first time at the age of nine to twelve months, before they produce their first spoken words. Scientists believe that such gestures are based on relatively complex intelligence abilities and represent the starting point for the use of symbols and therefore also human language. Deictic gestures are thus milestones in the development of human speech.

Surprisingly, observations of comparable gestures in our closest living relatives, the great apes, are relatively rare. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in the Kibale National Park in Uganda, for example, use so-called directed scratches, to indicate distinct spots on their bodies to be groomed. Deictic gestures thus represent an extremely rare form of communication evolutionarily and have been suggested as confined to primates only.

According to the two researchers from Seewiesen and Vienna, however, such behaviour is not restricted to humans and great apes. For two years, Simone Pika und Thomas Bugnyar investigated the non-vocal behaviour of individually marked members of a wild raven community in the Cumberland Wildpark in Grünau, Austria. They observed that ravens use their beaks similar to hands to show and offer objects such as moss, stones and twigs. These distinct gestures were predominantly aimed at partners of the opposite sex and resulted in frequent orientation of recipients to the object and the signallers. Subsequently, the ravens interacted with each other, for example, by example billing or joint manipulation of the object.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111129112319.htm

[doc03]

1. I saw a documentary on crows, they can recognize human faces,

use tools, can be taught to talk, have over a hundred sounds they use to communicate and they even taught them to use a vending machine for food.

[geckosfeet]

2. Dogs point with their snouts as well.

[hunter]

4. I was thinking that too...

How can they miss dogs?

Most dogs I've known have a variety of "Hey, check this out!" gestures.

Dogs also recognize pointing and will look in the same direction you are looking.

[BadgerKid]

5. Sometimes if even a bit too personally.

:bounce:

[geckosfeet]

6. Yeah they do get kind of nosey....

[libinnyandia]

3. One of my favorite books is King Solomon's Ring by Konrad

Lorenz. It has a lot of stories about animals' intelligence.

[Kablooie]

7. Dogs instinctively understand human pointing fingers.

They follow the trajectory to see what you are pointing at.
Chimps don't have the ability to do this even after repeated attempts to train them.

[Humanist_Activist]

10. Which is itself a result of thousands of years of selective breeding...

Wolves don't follow human gestures either, even though they are so closely related to dogs. Humans have selected for breeding dogs that can understand human speech and gestures for maybe as long as 10,000 years or so.

The fact that there are wild animals that do the same things as humans is what's remarkable, it was naturally selected for, rather than human selected for.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Ravens are scary smart

They even know my habits. When I put my garbage out, I start with recycling bins. When I bring the bags out, a flock of ravens are already gathering in the trees above me, waiting for a chance to rip the bags open.

Luckily, they haven't figured out a way to cooperate and get the lid off the garbage can. But it's only time before they figure that out.

[roguevalley]

9. ravens also do these things

tear wind shield wipers off your cars

play fly in the sky with each other when its windy or not-fly high and fall until they get low before flying up again

attack and buzz cats for sport.

attack and buzz eagles for sport

Sit with their feathers fluffed out until they are big as bowling balls and bitch, chirp and boing boing at the top of their voices at the top of telephone polls.

Did I tell you they were the awesomeness? They are.