Scientists thought ravens followed wolves. They were wrong (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 1 month ago by HappyHappyJoyJoy@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

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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.

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[-] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago

To better understand raven behavior, researchers fitted 69 birds with small GPS trackers...

Nice

[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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?

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Wait, wait, wait-- so it's still about the kills, right, and rich feeding grounds for ravens...?? OP, please explain?

This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places.

Haha, really?

[-] belluck@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 1 month ago

I don’t get your confusion here. Previous consensus was that ravens followed wolves to their prey, while this study showed that they independently fly to certain locations in anticipation of finding a wolf and its prey there.