Credit: Popular Science

A flock of ravens ravaging a carcass may technically be called an unkindness, but the real unkindness is using that term. Everyone is always hating on the smarty pants, but ravens are not terrifying. Do they have sharp, curved beaks that they use to tear dead animals to pieces? Yes. Are their calls reminiscent of a creepy laugh? Most definitely. But just because they’re masterminds doesn’t make them evil—it just makes them awesome.

Ravens can solve puzzles, trick other animals into helping them out, and communicate with each other at a level even apes can’t match. And now we know they can hatch plans. These aren’t dastardly plans to overthrow humans in a battle for control of the Earth (we hope)—they’re plans to get better food for themselves. It’s like the marshmallow test—more on that in a minute—but for birds that have more self control than most children.

This latest revelation comes courtesy of two cognitive scientists at Lund University in Sweden who literally put ravens to test. They published their findings on Friday in the […]