Edgar Allan Poe knew what he was doing when he used the raven instead of some other bird to croak “nevermore” in his famous poem. The raven has long been associated with death and dark omens, but the real bird is much more multifaceted. Here are 10 fascinating facts about ravens.
When it comes to animal intelligence, these birds rate up there with chimpanzees and dolphins. In one logic test, a raven had to reach a hanging piece of food by pulling up a bit of the string, anchoring it with its talon, and repeating until the food was in reach. Many ravens got the food on the first try, some within 30 seconds. If a raven knows another raven is watching it hide its food, it will pretend to put the food in one place while really hiding it in another. Since the other ravens are smart too, this only works sometimes. In the wild, ravens have pushed rocks on people to keep them from climbing to their nests, played dead beside a beaver carcass to scare other ravens away from the feast, and stolen Costco customers’ packaged meats right out of their carts.
2. Ravens can imitate human speech.
In captivity, ravens can learn to talk better than some parrots. They also mimic other noises, like car engines, toilets flushing, and animal and bird calls. Ravens have been known to imitate wolves or foxes to attract them to carcasses that the raven isn’t capable of breaking open. When the wolf is done eating, the raven gets the leftovers.
Many European cultures took one look at this large black bird with an intense gaze and thought it was evil in the flesh … er, feathers. In France, people believed ravens were the souls of wicked priests, while crows were wicked nuns. In Germany, ravens were the incarnation of damned souls or sometimes Satan himself. In Sweden, ravens that croaked at night were thought to be the souls of murdered people who didn’t have proper Christian burials. And in Denmark, people believed that night ravens were exorcized spirits, and you’d better not look up at them in case there was a hole in the bird’s wing, because you might look through the hole and turn into a raven yourself.
4. Ravens appear in many of the world’s mythologies.
Cultures from Tibet to Greece have seen the raven as a messenger for the gods. Celtic goddesses of warfare often took the form of ravens during battles. The Viking god, Odin, had two ravens named Hugin (“thought”) and Munin (“memory”), which flew around the world every day and reported back to Odin every night about what they saw. Chinese myths said ravens caused bad weather in the forests to warn people that the gods were going to pass by. And many Native American peoples consider the raven a sly trickster who was involved in the creation of the world.
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Ravens have been observed in Alaska and Canada using snow-covered roofs as slides. In Maine, they have been seen rolling down snowy hills. They often play keep-away with other animals like wolves, otters, and dogs. Ravens even make toys—a rare animal behavior—by using sticks, pinecones, golf balls, or rocks to play with each other or by themselves. And sometimes they just taunt or mock other creatures because it’s funny.
6. Ravens do weird things with ants.
They lie in anthills and roll around so the ants swarm on them, or they chew the ants up and rub their guts on their feathers. The scientific name for this is “anting.” Some songbirds, crows, and jays do it too. The behavior is not well understood. Theories about its purpose range from the ants acting as an insecticide and fungicide for the bird, to ant secretions soothing a molting bird’s skin, to the whole performance being a mild addiction. One thing seems clear, though: anting feels great if you’re a bird.
It turns out that ravens make “very sophisticated nonvocal signals,” according to researchers. In other words, they gesture to communicate. A study in Austria found that ravens point with their beaks to indicate an object to another bird, just as we do with our fingers. They also hold up an object to get another bird’s attention. This is the first time researchers have observed naturally occurring gestures in any animal other than primates.
8. Ravens are adaptable to different environments.
Evolutionarily speaking, the deck is stacked in the raven’s favor. They can live in a variety of habitats, from snow to desert to mountains to forests. They are scavengers with a varied diet that includes fish, meat, seeds, fruit, carrion, and garbage. They are not above tricking animals out of their food—one raven will distract the other animal, for example, and the other will steal its food. They have few predators and live a long time: 17 years in the wild and up to 40 years in captivity.
Ravens mate for life and live in pairs in a fixed territory. When young ravens reach adolescence, they leave home and join gangs, like every human mother’s worst nightmare. These flocks of young birds live and eat together until they mate and pair off. Interestingly, living among teenagers seems to be stressful for the raven. Scientists have found higher levels of stress hormones in teenage raven droppings than in the droppings of mated adults. It’s never easy being a teenage rebel.
10. Ravens show empathy for each other.
Despite their mischievous nature, ravens seem capable of feeling empathy. When a raven’s friend loses in a fight, they will seem to console the losing bird. They also remember birds they like and will respond in a friendly way to certain birds for at least three years after seeing them. (But they also hold grudges.) Although a flock of ravens is called an unkindness, the birds appear to be anything but.
