Crows possess the ability to recognize familiar human voices, as well as the calls of other birds of different species. Thus, these corvids, known for their continuous intelligence samples, manage to identify potential threats in their environment from sounds.
This is what is deduced from a new study carried out by Claudia Wascher and her colleagues at the University of Vienna (Austria) and published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Cognition . In their experiments, the scientists used recordings to analyze how the crows responded when they heard five voices of familiar people and when they heard the same words spoken by five other strange subjects. In this way, they observed that they only showed signs of alert (raising their heads and looking towards the loudspeaker) when they heard the unknown voices. The discovery thus adds to the recent finding that magpies ( Pica pica ) recognize and differentiate human faces with their sight.
