Birds
Common Raven
Corvus corax · also called northern raven
The common raven is a large black bird with a brain to rival a great ape’s. It ranges across half the planet, from Arctic ice to hot desert, and wherever it lives people have noticed the same things: it watches, it remembers, it plays, and it seems to be working something out.
Overview
The common raven is one of the most widely distributed birds in the world, at home across the entire Northern Hemisphere in almost every habitat that has some elevation, structure, or wildness to it — mountains, boreal and temperate forest, sea cliffs, tundra, desert, farmland, and increasingly towns and cities. Adults form lifelong pairs that defend a permanent territory, while younger, unpaired birds roam and roost in large communal groups.
Intelligence
Ravens, along with their corvid relatives, are the benchmark for bird intelligence, and they match or beat non-human primates on many cognitive tests:
- Tool use and manufacture, including bending and shaping objects to reach food.
- Planning for the future — selecting and keeping a tool or a bartering token to use much later, and choosing a smaller immediate reward or a token that will buy a better one soon.
- Theory of mind — a raven caching food behaves differently depending on whether another raven can see it, and will move the cache if it thinks it was observed.
- Individual recognition and long memory — ravens remember specific people and birds, and how they behaved, for years, and share information about threats.
Behaviour
Ravens are famous for play. They toboggan down snowy roofs, roll and barrel in updrafts, hang upside down from branches, and pass sticks back and forth in mid-air, and young birds manipulate novel objects endlessly. They also cooperate: ravens will lead wolves or people to a carcass they cannot open themselves, then share in the results, and they form temporary alliances and reconcile after fights.
Their communication is rich, with more than 30 recognised call types plus gestures — a raven can point with its bill or hold up an object to direct another bird’s attention.
Diet
The raven is a supreme generalist. Carrion is a staple — ravens follow wolves, big cats, and hunters — but they also take insects, small mammals, reptiles, eggs and chicks, grain, berries, and anything edible discarded by humans. This flexibility is a big reason the species thrives almost everywhere.
Status
The common raven is listed as Least Concern, is abundant, and has been expanding in range and numbers, recolonising areas of Europe and North America from which it was once persecuted and moving into new suburban and agricultural landscapes. In a few places its growing numbers are now a concern for the species it preys on, such as desert tortoises and some ground-nesting birds.
Common Raven: common questions
How intelligent is a raven?
Among the most intelligent of all animals. Ravens make and use tools, cache food and then re-hide it if they were watched, remember which individual humans or ravens have treated them well or badly for years, understand what a competitor can and cannot see, and can plan for events hours ahead — trading a token for a future reward, a skill previously shown only in great apes. In multi-step puzzle-box experiments they often outperform monkeys.
What is the difference between a raven and a crow?
Ravens are noticeably larger — roughly the size of a buzzard versus a pigeon — with a heavier bill, shaggy throat feathers, and a wedge-shaped rather than fan-shaped tail in flight. Ravens often soar and do rolls and tumbles; crows flap steadily. The calls differ too — a raven gives a deep, croaking "gronk," a crow a higher "caw." Ravens tend to be birds of wilder country and mountains, though both adapt well to people.
Do ravens really hold funerals?
Not funerals, but they do gather around a dead raven and call loudly, and research shows this is information-gathering rather than mourning. A raven that sees a dead member of its species, or sees a predator near one, becomes wary of that place and that danger for weeks afterward, and may recruit others. It is a way of learning about threats without experiencing them directly.
Why are ravens linked to death and magic in so many cultures?
Their intelligence, their black plumage, their loud human-like voice, and above all their habit of appearing at carcasses and battlefields to scavenge. Ravens feature as creators and tricksters in Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, as Odin's all-seeing messengers Huginn and Muninn in Norse myth, as omens in the Tower of London, and in countless folk tales — almost always as clever, watchful, and slightly ominous.