Clever birds work it all out and get trains to do their heavy work for them

Mike Fairgrieve

RAIL police were flapping when they found small pebbles and gravel on stretches of North-east railway sleepers.

But you could have knocked them down with a feather when they discovered the bird-brained culprits were crows!

Sgt Mike Burnett of British Transport Police said: "The problem was spotted by an engineer doing maintenance work.

"It was first reported as people putting stones on the line.

"But something did not make sense. It was out at Kennethmont and Huntly and that's not an area where we would expect trouble.

"Our first thought was kids, but it's in the middle of nowhere."

Then an eagle-eyed signal operator solved the mystery.

Mike said: "He spotted the birds putting them on the lines so the trains would go over them."

It turns out the crows know exactly what they're doing.

They place the stones on the tracks, wait for trains to run over them, then swallow the debris, which helps them digest their food.

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See...thats called being smart...now i think we know how smart I is...

and they say animals are dumb just more proof that they are smarter then given credit for

I used to have a crow when I was younger, he learnt to wolf whistle and could make a sound like he was saying helloooo. He was extremly intelligent and would
push open the shed window every morning, strut up to our back door, bang on it
and wait patiently for me to open it and present him with his breakfast of dog food.
He also loved to stand on the handlebars of my bike and flap his wings when I was
going fast so it was like him flying but with none of the effort.
He did eventually master flying on his own, when he realised that the pub I used to cycle to, which was a few miles from our house, would be full of customers eating at lunch time and would gladly through him titbits when he wolf whistled or said "Hellooo". He was definetly not Bird Brained.

animals are stupid beings that do things to SURVIVE, they DO NOT tHINK....saying they are smart or that they think allows them to be equal to humans and this is just not the case...sorry!

Of course animals think. thinking is part of survival... alot of things people do are based on instincts as well. Humans are animals too. humans and other animals all rely on both instinct and thought and the ability to learn.

What made those crows know that putting the pebbles on the track would crush them if they didnt have to think?
Trains are an unnatural man-made machine. It would not be in a crow's natural instincts to know what trains are capable of. They had to figure this out on their own.

What your logic is saying, is that animals are basically robots pre-programmed only with the knowledge that they need to eat, drink, breed, and escape predators. If animals could not think how would they learn new methods of hunting, and survival.
How did foxes learn that theyr scent cannot be detected in water so they can hide in rivers to escape hunting dogs?
How did my dog learn that it's better to wait behind the shed for a large group of birds to land before chasing them than to stay out running in view and chase them one at a time? And when he didn't want to come inside when it was nice out a few days ago, what made him decide to go hide underneath the upside down boat to prevent us from finding him for awhile?
i dont think this stuff is natural instincts. It's intelligent thinking.
Everyone has instincts, even humans. But everyone also has the ability to think and learn.

Animals think, but they don't think about thinking.