In one of Aesop's 2,500-year-old fables, a crow is searching for water.
It spies a pitcher and discovers liquid inside — but it's beyond reach.
Soon, the crow begins dropping pebbles into the pitcher.
One by one, they displace the water, and the crow quenches its thirst.
Interestingly, this fable turns out to be pretty accurate.
In a 2014 experiment, scientists placed a food reward in a tube partially filled with water and watched as crow after crow dropped stone after stone in until the food was in beak-snatching distance.
This is just one of many fascinating displays of intelligence from corvids — the bold, brainy family of songbirds that includes crows, ravens, jays, and magpies.
To start, corvids are strategic when it comes to their food.
They ransack trash bins and snatch bites from under other birds' beaks.
They also hoard and cache their food.
