Testing The World's Smartest Crow

These juicy nuggets are the favorite food of an incredibly intelligent crow, but they're being defended by this bird cage.

Because if she wants to gain access to the nuggets, she'll need to first solve the nine increasingly difficult puzzles I designed to protect them.

This crow escape room gauntlet is extremely challenging.

So challenging in fact, for comparison, I had some young humans also attempt to solve the exact same puzzles with fascinating results.

But just like with my backyard squirrels, I will admit that in hindsight, I completely underestimated my adversary.

Now, juicy nugs might seem like an odd choice.

But if you look closely, you can spot the exact moment my personal vendetta against the crows started about a year ago.

Did you catch it?

I'll play it back, but this time watch right here.

The crows had figured out I DoorDash food to my porch on an embarrassingly regular basis.

So when a car rolled up to my house and a person got out, it meant dinner was served.

And this continued on for nearly every delivery until it all came to a head one day, when they once again decided to go for my nuggets.

But this time, instead of giving up like a quitter, I reordered my food because I was really angry and hungry.

And this is when I realized I was in over my head because I was no longer just having my food stolen by a crow, I was being bullied by a crow as he just knocks over my drink and flies off.

In fact, I'm no crow translator, but if you play that back at double speed, that's a bully's laugh if I've ever heard it.

And the true irony here is of the 8 billion people on the plane, mine was quite possibly the worst porch for them to be stealing from because I spent the better part of seven years seeking revenge on a different species that was stealing from my porch.

In the form of fake packages, fine glitter and copious amounts of fart spray.

And so at this point, I needed answers.

I wanted to know if I was really being targeted here.

Like actually how smart is a crow.

And after even a minimal amount of research, it turns out really, really smart.

From playing an instrument, to understanding and manipulating human objects, to straight-up psychological warfare.

Where you see this crow here wants some water.

But the big bad vulture is currently being a water hog.

So he sneaks up behind him and plucks out a feather, literally framing the poor other vulture who gets chased off as this genius instigator gets what he wants.

So to fully test the theory that I was deliberately being picked on by all my neighborhood crows, I found a crow named Cheryl at a bird rescue sanctuary to represent their species as I tested the limits of their intelligence.

And like any good scientist would, we started off with the first step of the scientific method.

By just observing her with some cameras we placed in her enclosure.

It was really interesting to see how her curiosity would drive her to figure out clever ways to interact with objects in her environment, occasionally motivated by a strategically placed treat.

It became clear she had a few favorite objects she loved to play with, like this wooden ball, as she demonstrated a surprisingly deep understanding of cause and effect.

After a couple of months of observation and study a plan had now formed to test their species with a nine part escape room gauntlet, which meant the only thing left at this point was to put that plan into action with a 10 second build montage.

Here are the basic elements.

For starters, I've placed her favorite combo meal right here on this table.

From sad experience, I know when she enters this room, the first thing she'll be drawn to are the juicy nuggets, but it will be impossible for her to access them because of this reverse bird cage that's meant to keep birds out.

And the only way for this bird cage to autonomously unprotect the nuggets is if she solves all nine of our puzzles starting first right here on this desk.

Because this is where Cheryl will find a graduated cylinder with her favorite wooden ball that's too far down for her to reach directly with her beak.

So, here's the question.

If you're a crow, how would you solve this puzzle given all the materials you have at your disposal here on the table?

Well, if you said you would take the heavy rocks and you would add them one at a time to raise the water level, you'd be right.

So Cheryl will have to come to the same conclusion in addition to not using any of the other decoy materials like the cork or the cotton balls that would just float uselessly on the surface.

Once she has enough rocks to get the ball, the water level will now be high enough to complete the electrical circuit with these two pieces of copper tape.

That then sends a signal to an arduino that this puzzle has been sufficiently solved and after a few seconds time delay, a light automatically turns on, leading her to the next puzzle.

AKA the scales of justice.

After seeing videos like this where the crows are interacting with human made objects and tools, in this case to get water, we present her with a scale to see if she can figure out how to use it.

Once again, there are objects on the table to choose from, and if she adds enough of them to one side, it will tip the scales, triggering this limit switch here indicating the puzzle is solved which will activate the lights on the Scooby Doo Portrait Roulette.

The goal for this puzzle is to assess their facial recognition capabilities because I remember seeing a study where researchers captured and tagged a set of crows wearing a specific mask and then later released them.

So after that, the crows would dive bomb and attack anyone wearing that mask.

But even more interestingly, they were still doing it a decade later.

Meaning if a crow doesn't like you for some reason, they will remember your face and pass that vendetta on for generations.

In our case, we left a picture of me in Cheryl's home enclosure.

And every time she pulled on the leather strap underneath the picture of my face, she would get a treat.

So to see if she remembers my face even in different clothes, we'll rotate through these portraits that include decoys like Kevin The Backyard Scientist and some guy who made a cameo in my lemon battery video.

And if she pulls on the leather strap and rings the bell associated with my face, the piezoelectric sensor on the back will sense the vibration and some money will flutter down from the ceiling at which point we once again rotate the Scooby Doo portraits.

Once she's correctly picked me three times in a row, she can move on to the next puzzle called the cash grab.

The idea here was to mimic the videos where people train crows to go out and retrieve money they find lying around and then exchange it for a treat.

In our case, all the dollar bills have NFC chips on them.

And the money collection box has an NFC reader near the opening.

So if the reader registers all $3 bills have been added, it tells that to a micro controller that activates a servo motor that opens this door, revealing a tool.

Now, on the off chance she even makes it this far, Cheryl has to grab that tool and bring it to the next puzzle.

AKA the fishing hole.

The inspiration for this puzzle was from this fascinating video I saw where a crow took a piece of bread that would have been a fine meal on its own, but instead, it used the bread as bait to lure a fish to upgrade to a much better meal.

And then in another video, I saw a crow use a stick as a tool to remove a tasty worm out of a hole.

So here, Cheryl will first need to figure out how to bend the end part of this tool into a hook shape after which she has to stick it in here and fish out the cup.

Now, the whole container system here is supported by a strain gauge, continuously measuring the weight of the system.

So when it registers its lighter by exactly one cup, the next puzzle lights up.

And this was a pretty straightforward cup stack challenge.

And it's something we saw a lot of examples of online, including with Cheryl herself in her free play.

The engineering here is pretty clever though with an inner and outer copper ring in each cup.

So as they stack up, the electrical circuit gets closer and closer to being completed, and when she has the final cup she retrieved from the fishing goal, it completes the circuit lighting up an old classic throwback from the squirrel obstacle course, you guessed it, the tourist trap.

This is sort of the designed as a reprieve and a little bit of a fun break for the final two puzzles.

And lest you think crows don't like to have fun, I'll direct your attention to this crow repeatedly sledding down this roof and this crow and his buddy swinging from this branch like Tarzan here.

Of course, when she sticks her head through the hole, allowing us to take her adorable picture, she's rewarded with an appetizer portion of a juicy nugget to wet her palate and give her the strength to go the distance.

Which she'll need to face the penultimate challenge, AKA the shipwreck.

The idea behind this puzzle came from seeing crows coordinate their beaks and feet sort of like this.

So Cheryl has to pull the cork off and then continue pulling up on the string, pinning it under her foot the whole time until she's pulled enough of the string for the ship to teeter backwards.

Triggering this tilt switch, sending the signal to activate the final challenge, the egg drop.

The concept here came from probably the most incredible example of Crow intelligence in the wild that I stumbled upon in my research, where in order to crack open an impossibly hard walnut, they would first drop the walnut into the street directly above the crosswalk.

Then cars would drive by cracking the nut, at which point the crows would wait for the crosswalk to turn, then safely hop out to collect their delicious reward.

So inside our egg, there's an IR emitter.

But in order to access that, instead of teaming up with cars in a crosswalk, Cheryl will need to team up with our buddy Isaac Newton, harnessing the power of gravitational potential energy to break it open.

Because if she manages to do that after somehow solving all the other eight puzzles as well.

Well, then this IR emitter will trigger this IR sensor hidden at the base of the table which will give the final signal to raise the bird cage, earning her the right to gorge on her well deserved combo meal for as long as she wants without any fear of me chasing her off my porch.

I should mention by the way, this beautiful bird cage was custom built for me by my Mythbuster buddy, Adam Savage, and he made a really cool build video for it over on his YouTube channel called tested, so you should go check it out.

So, with the maze all set up, I just needed to lure Cheryl to the study and I knew just the trick.

At which point all I had to do was wait.

And I didn't have to wait long.

And I should mention while I do have an affinity for testing species like crows, squirrels and even octopi, my favorite species is humans.

So I invited a few of them out to serve as a control group before Cheryl made her official attempt.

- Okay, to get the juicy nuggets, you've got to solve nine puzzles in this room.

Any questions?

- Umm.

- Go.

And their problem solving skills kicked in right away.

- I see white here.

- Yeah, maybe in the drawers.

Nothing.

- Hold on, wait. Think like a crow.

- To retrieve the wooden ball, they started by just trying to utilize all the various objects on the table.

So - So we've got a cork, pom pom balls, rocks.

- It was really cool to see them trying a bunch of different things.

Totally unafraid of failure.

- We need to find one that's long enough so that it'll push the water in and then it'll rise up.

- While learning a little more with each unsuccessful attempt.

- Maybe we put the rocks in and make the water go up.

- Oh yeah!

- Until finally...

- Use more rocks.

- More rocks!

- They earned the eureka moment.

- I got this!

- At the second puzzle, they started to recognize some patterns and pick up some confidence and momentum.

On puzzle three immediately demonstrating their own excellent facial recognition skills with perhaps my favorite line of this whole video.

- Hey, I recognize...it's Backyard Scientist, the guy who helped with the lemon guy and Mark Rober.

- On this one, they couldn't reach the bell, so they tried a very novel approach that didn't quite work.

- Just barely!

- Can't we use this?

- But it inspired a solution that did.

- Oh, money!

- Sort of.

- Oh no.

- How are we supposed to go for that?

- We're not birds of prey.

- And trying different things and knowing that failure is part of the process is what it means to think like an engineer.

This is such an important skill to develop for life.

It's written right on the side of every CrunchLabs Build Box that gets delivered to your door every month where we build a really fun toy together and learn about the fascinating physics that make them work.

But the best part is just like I try to do with my YouTube videos, we hide the vegetables, so you're learning all these useful life skills like resilience.

But every step of the journey is still really fun.

Plus all CrunchLabs subscribers now get their actual selfie taken from actual space and the chance to win the platinum ticket every month to come hang out with me and my team for a day.

So if you're a kid and you're looking for something to put at the top of your Christmas list or you're just looking to be the household hero by gifting it to someone else, use the link in the video description or head to crunchlabs.com or we're giving away two free boxes for our holiday special.

So you've got something even more fun to open up than some juicy nuggets.

- We gotta get out before Mark gets here.

- Back to Cheryl.

Just as I suspected the irresistible prize inside the bird cage caught her immediate attention.

I can't blame her for trying the brute force shortcut, which of course comes up short.

And as she steps back and surveys the situation, you can tell she knows this isn't going to be easy.

So she starts out with a lap around the room which admittedly was not very informative at which point she remembers she has wings and starts checking things out from a higher vantage point.

And you could almost see her trying to work things out as she recognized variations on a few elements and toys from her enclosure because we tried to model some of the puzzles after them.

But even still, ultimately, she was left scratching her head on how to proceed until we officially kick things off by lighting up the first puzzle which piqued her interest enough to investigate further.

And that's what she noticed her favorite wooden ball.

And just as I'd hoped, she immediately tried to retrieve it but came up just short.

So the question was, what would she do next?

And this was the first moment I realized my nuggets might be in trouble because just like the kids, she surveyed all the items at her disposal on the table, but unlike the kids, she settled immediately on the right answer.

And right as I was thinking she was going to smoke the kids in this competition, she recalibrated my expectations with a reminder that anatomically speaking, she was still in fact, working with the brain, the size of a grape as she dropped the rock into the cork dish.

And after realizing she'd done something wrong, tried to correct herself by placing the rock in the empty beaker.

After which, to her credit, she refocused her efforts.

And it didn't take much longer to get to this point where she very cleverly used the bobbing action from the buoyancy force on the ball to save herself a few more rock drops.

And with that, the sensor was tripped and puzzle number two was illuminating indicating it was time to move on.

Cheryl had a set up fairly similar to the scales of justice in her enclosure at home.

So this was more of an underhanded softball pitch to allow her to build up some momentum.

And sure enough, she got right to work at which point she immediately quit work to try and force the balance beam into the completed position.

But since the limit switch needs a sustained contact before lighting up the next puzzle, she ditched that plan with a return to her more conventional efforts.

She was surprisingly picky at which coins she wanted to add to the dish.

So picky fact that adorably she went back to get her favorite wooden ball to add to the tray.

And look, not to nit pick because she was doing great, but she displayed a fairly rudimentary grasp on the relative densities between a wooden ball and a metal coin as she seemed sort of incredulous that wouldn't do the trick.

But after one more coin and a bit of an assist that I'm going to let slide, the limit switch was triggered, moving us on to puzzle three, the Scooby Doo portrait roulette And right away, she seemed to recognize my face from her enclosure back home because she immediately started calling a bunch at my picture.

And once again, while I don't speak crow, I'm pretty sure this translates to "you're way more handsome than the lemon guy".

Once she sufficiently expressed her feelings, she rang the bell under my picture, triggering the piezoelectric sensor, sending a dollar bill fluttering down.

Now we've seen her stuff paper to tissue boxes back in her home enclosure, so to help nudge her in the right direction, the lights to the cash grab, turn themselves on.

And after a bit of poking around, she figured out what to do by putting the money in the box at which point nothing happened.

And as you can see, this confuses Cheryl and then it frustrates Cheryl as she tries to find another way in.

We wanted her to ring the bell a total of three times to prove that picking my face once wasn't a fluke.

So eventually when no new lights come on and nothing happens, she makes her way back to the Scooby Doo portrait roulette to troubleshoot things.

Eventually she rings the bell under my face once more, letting the dollar bill flutter by.

And then one final time only on this one making an incredible Dude Perfect worthy mid-air grab right at the warning track.

From there, It was pretty straightforward for her to stash both of the final bills registering a completion of the puzzle through the NFC reader giving her both a jump scare and the tools she need for puzzle five, the fishing hole.

Now, fortunately for Cheryl, she hops on over to the newly lit puzzle without realizing this is a bring-your-own-pole type of situation which once again puts her at a dead end.

But at this point, she seemed to have an understanding of the cause and effect relationship between the puzzles.

So she scoots herself back over to the cash grab, grabs the tool and then makes her way back.

And on her first attempt, she tries to sort of wedge the cup with the stick, which clearly wasn't going to work, which leads to what is quite possibly one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

As she goes full on blacksmith mode, hammering away, fashioning the end of the stick into a hook at which point she drops it back in and successfully retrieves the cup.

This of course is registered by the strain gauge which communicates to the micro controller, paving the way to the cup stack.

And I knew this would likely be one of the easier puzzles for her since she played with a similar toy, a bunch at home.

The trick would be if she could figure out the final cup in the stack was the one she caught from the previous puzzle.

And sure enough, without too much difficulty, she stacks the first cup and with just a little more difficulty gets the second one.

But once again, when no new lights come on, she quickly figures out our clever trick and out clevers us.

Retrieving the top cup and bringing it back to complete the copper tape circuit allowing her to move on to the crowd favorites, the tourist trap.

Cheryl had earned every bit of a break by somehow making it this far.

Plus I figured she could use a little caloric nugget boost to give her the energy and motivation to finish this out.

And in exchange for all that, she did not disappoint with the snapshot worthy of a postcard.

Which meant it was on to the penultimate puzzle, the shipwreck.

And the calorie boots seemed to pay off because without a whole lot to interact with here, she pretty quickly figured out she should just pull out the cork showcasing her very skillful beak/claw coordinating in the process.

And as soon as it was pulled out far enough to teeter the ship, the tilt switched pass on the input signal, revealing to the room, the final boss.

Of course, I've shown just the highlights here from all her attempts on the puzzle, but she'd somehow persevered and made it this far, which meant if she figured this out, it would be an absolute clean sweep.

So after sizing up the situation and considering all the options, she comes to the correct conclusion and teams up with gravity, exposing the IR emitter which gives the final signal it is time for her to enjoy the greatest meal of her little feathered life.

And to no one's surprise after solving all the complex puzzles in this escape room gauntlet, it was a pretty simple task to get right to the nuggets.

But before she even finished her long coveted and well earned reward, she delighted me with one final touching surprise as she grabbed another nuggt slathered it in a little dipping sauce and then offered it up almost as a gesture of mutual respect and goodwill between our species.

And I suppose in the end whether or not my original crows were picking on me is sort of irrelevant because I now know they're smart enough where you don't really want to find out.

So I had a respect to both them and my new friend Cheryl, whenever I now order food to my door, I leave a side of juicy nuggets as an offering which I hope will put me in the good graces of them and their posterity for years to come as they pass down tales of my generosity to their future grand crows.

Either way, it just feels good to return to my roots, feeding all the neighborhood birds.

Wait zoom in.

Oh, no.

Here we go again.

This is Travis.

- I'm at a loss for words.

- And the reason he's at a loss of words is because his hack back box happened to contain the platinum diploma, which means college is now free for him or anyone he loves.

- That's awesome.

- And the chance to win free college and to visit the CrunchLabs, plus the fact that you'll get your selfie taken in space are just a couple of perks you get automatically if you sign up for box, if you're a kid or Hack Pack, if you're a teen or adult.

- Nailed it!

- And Hack Pack especially makes for a great holiday gift for that person in your life that's really hard to shop for.

Because it's basically a really fun robot in a box that gets shipped to your door where we build it together and it meets you at your current level.

So if you've never built or coded anything before, it will be your first successful step just towards making cool stuff like you saw all throughout this video with the Crows because it works right out of the box without needing to know any code.

But if you're already a master builder and programmer, we design it intentionally to be tweaked and modified.

So you can get creative using the online coding module to totally upgrade what it can do and then show it off and get feedback from the community.

So this year, whether you're a teen or adult or you're a kid, if you want to give or receive the gift of thinking like an engineer while having a ton of fun at the same time, just go to crunchlabs.com or use the link in the video description where to say thank you, we're giving away either one or two free boxes as a holiday special.

Thanks for watching.