FT263

In Victorian times, mammals were placed on the highest branches of Darwin’s “Tree of Life”. The famously wise old crow was knocked off its privil­eged perch, and stories of clever birds were downgraded to mere folklore. In fortean terms, they were damned data which science ignored. Birds have small brains and crucially lack the prefrontal cortex associated with intelli­gence in mammals, and that appeared to be the end of it.

Tales of crows acting intelli­gently go back at least as far as Aesop’s fable of the crow and the pitcher. Finding water level in the pitcher is too low for it to reach, the thirsty crow starts dropping in pebbles.