Annotated Bibliography-Big 3

This will be a draft of the annotated bibliographies for the 3 most important research articles I found.

Sources for Literature Review of Crow Intelligence:

Heather N., Cornell, Marzluff John M., and Pecoraro Shannon. “Social Learning Spreads Knowledge about Dangerous Humans among American Crows.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 279, no. 1728, Feb. 2012, pp. 499–508. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0957.

John Marzluff, wildlife scientist, and his colleagues at the University of Washington have been doing many different long-term studies on the wild crows in their campus. “Social Learning Spreads Knowledge about Dangerous Humans among American Crows,” is an extension of his previous work on crow recognition, and aims to show that information of potential dangers is passed through horizontal and vertical social learning. Their hypothesis is proven though the tracking of scolding and general reaction of the crows who were not directly captured. Over a five year period, the range of scolding has increased and the amount of scolding from uncaptured crows, as well as yound crows also increased. This shows a type of social learning that crows do to spread information about potential threats, expanding upon the intelligence of the crows previously shown by Marzluff.

Wascher, Claudia, et al. “Carrion Crows Learn to Discriminate between Calls of Reliable and Unreliable Conspecifics.” Animal Cognition, vol. 18, no. 5, Sept. 2015, pp. 1181–1185. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10071-015-0879-8.

Wascher, animal behavior researcher, and her colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England wrote “Carrion Crows Learn to Discriminate between Calls of Reliable and Unreliable Conspecifics,” as an expansion of a line of similar tests done on many different animals. The goal was to analyze whether or not crows could differentiate "reliable" and "unreliable" calls by showing certain groups of crows a "dead" conspecific, allowing them to hear their calls and monitor their reactions. The results showed a clear distinction showed by the crows between hearing the call of the "reliable" versus "unreliable" source. This reveals a sense of self-awareness and "trust" between crows that is required from animals with complex social structures, similar to humans.

Hillemann, Friederike, et al. “Waiting for Better, Not for More: Corvids Respond to Quality in Two Delay Maintenance Tasks.” Animal Behaviour, vol. 90, Apr. 2014, pp. 1–10. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.01.007.

Hillemann, behavioral ecologist, and researchers of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote “Waiting for Better, Not for More: Corvids Respond to Quality in Two Delay Maintenance Tasks” in order to test a crow's ability to control impulses. Through the test, the crows traded for a higher quality food item at the cost of waiting. This proved successful, as one crow was willing to wait over ten minutes to trade. This impulse control is an important tracker of intelligence and ability in animals. The crows were concluded to have made conscious decisions as while they traded for higher quality items, they did not trade for increased quantities.