Ravens have long been thought to follow wolves to find food, but new research shows they’re far more strategic. By tracking both animals in Yellowstone, scientists discovered that ravens memorize areas where wolf kills are likely and fly directly to those spots—sometimes from great distances. Rather than trailing wolves, they rely on learned patterns in the landscape. It’s a clever system that highlights just how intelligent these birds really are.

Ravens have long been thought to follow wolves to find food, but new research shows they’re far more strategic. By tracking both animals in Yellowstone, scientists discovered that ravens memorize areas where wolf kills are likely and fly directly to those spots—sometimes from great distances. Rather than trailing wolves, they rely on learned patterns in the landscape. It’s a clever system that highlights just how intelligent these birds really are.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    Neat to prove it for sure, but I feel like the scientists might be misrepresenting previous consensus to make their conclusions sound more momentous.

    Like did Raven experts really think that Ravens just followed wolves 24/7 to scavenge?

    … Ravens, the only animal other then humans known to be posses linguistic displacement (the ability to communicate ideas about locations that are far away in time and space), the ones that memorize hundreds of locations that other Ravens bury food so that they can later steal it, a literal top 5 animal in terms of cleverness creativity and problem solving, that can travel in any arbitrary direction of 3D space…

    … Experts of these creatures really thought that they just followed wolves 24/7 to pick up the scraps?