Ravens have social abilities previously only seen in humans

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Humans and their primate cousins are well known for their intelligence and social abilities. Birds may have given us the term bird-brained, but these animals have demonstrated a great deal of intelligence in many tasks.

However, much less is known about their social skills. A new study shows that ravens are socially savvier than we give them credit for. They are able to work out the social dynamics of other raven groups, something only humans had shown the ability to do.

Bullying in the community

Jorg Massen and his colleagues of the University of Vienna wanted to find out more about birds' social skills, so they studied ravens, which live in social groups. In their study, published in Nature Communications, they looked at whether ravens were intelligent enough to understand relationships in their own social groups, as well as if they could figure out social groups that they had never been a part of.