Delayed gratification and the omen cliché

Metaphors for bad omens

So, you already know that crows and ravens have a bad rep. When they’re not signalling something ominous in Hollywood films (yawn) they’re hanging out with witches or plucking out the eyes of the dead. Delicious. This slight on their character has not only been immortalised in collective pronouns, a murder and an unkindness respectively, but in countless pieces of literature.

As with many things, the Nordics had a more insightful outlook. In their mythology the Raven symbolizes wisdom. Specifically, the stories tells of two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who traverse the globe on a daily quest for knowledge, returning each evening to whisper observations in Odin’s ear. Pretty bad style.

Smart, successful, “pests”

We humans tend to dislike omnivores and canny animals. Creatures that have keenly adapted to our concrete forestry—pigeons, foxes, spiders, cockroaches, rats—are, rather than being commended for their versatility, dubbed “pests”.

Etymologically speaking, we consider them a baneful epidemic, an unwholesome contagion. Without getting too doomsday, it’s more than likely that these animals will have the adaptability to out-survive us. You’ve all heard the one about the cockroach and the post-nuclear scenario.

So what of crows and ravens? Several things. I can’t be sure if it’s a bit of Baader-Meihof at play, but it seems it’s only been in recent years that we’ve realised corvids are compelling contenders in the realm of intelligence.

Sure, dolphins, elephants, and more, have shown deep intellect, but not many are as fascinating the corvid. It’s not just their level of intelligence that is astonishing but the fact this wide-ranging acumen comes from something so other. Birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, and so perhaps it’s that distinctly human failing—arrogance—that kept our focus on primates as being the ones second only to ourselves.

Enough of that. Here’s the good bit.

Crows display delayed gratification

You’ve heard of the Stanford “marshmallow test”, right? In this experiment, children were presented with the choice of one marshmallow immediately or, if they were able to wait, two marshmallows after around 15 minutes.

This test was replicated in a variety of ways after the initial experiment and two main findings were unearthed: age is a factor in the ability to defer gratification, and those that performed well did better later in life. Four-year-olds were least able to control their urges, whereas at five years old children were able to distract themselves by covering their eyes or hiding under the desk. At 8–13 years old, children were then able to “employ abstract versus arousing thoughts in order to distract their minds”.

Most animals, by and large, are unable to delay gratification. This isn’t surprising—animals perceive time in a different way to us. Understanding a favourable future, affected by actions in the present, requires the imagination of various outcomes, a “mind’s eye”. For most creatures “now or never” is just a permanent state—life is harsh and survival depends on immediacy.

Incredibly, crows and ravens possess such an imagination. Just as five-year-olds would hide under the desk or stroke the marshmallow, longing to devour it but openly showing restraint, crows are able to hold off—apparently by picking up the item and putting it back, perhaps going through the motions of caching until the waiting period is up. Check out this adorable footage of a crow holding back for reward. (It fails the first test then succeeds the second.)

In Friederike Hillemann‘s study Waiting for better, not for more: corvids respond to quality in two delay maintenance tasks, crows were tasked with determining either the quality or quantity of a food reward, after which they had to decide whether or not to wait for the “better” reward. It turns out crows can delay gratification just fine, although only if the reward is of a higher quality.

The birds “exchanged more often when the potential reward was highly preferred, the initial item was of low quality, and when the relative value of the reward was clearly distinct from the initial item.” Essentially, sausage was worth waiting for if beans were the initial offering.

Hillenmann isn’t the only researcher to have looked into this. In a study by Valerie Dufour, Claudia A. F. Wascher, Anna Braun, Rachael Miller, Thomas Bugnyar, titled Corvids can decide if a future exchange is worth waiting for, it’s noted that corvids “are capable of controlling their immediate impulse to eat in order to gain a more preferred item in near future (waiting not only for seconds but also for minutes), with a maximal waiting time of up to 5 minutes.” Given that crows are renowned food-hoarders, and so “time-dependant calculations bear high ecological relevance”, it’s not surprising that they rock the test.

Before you pfft these tests with “yeah, but that’s all in a lab”, dive the shiz into this: crows can fish. This remarkable discovery was made by Oren Hassen, who wonderfully documents it on his website. His story tells of spotting crows dipping bread into water, which has been observed before—a canny trick to soften it for consumption—only these hooded crows weren’t after more palatable bread.

They were delaying the immediate food option for a later, better one. The crows were catching fish with the bread. Check out this amazing footage. (You can see the crow dipping bread and eating it, then dropping the largest piece in and catching a fish.)

According to Hilleman, “crows and ravens performed comparably to primates and children tested in [similar] tasks”. One difference worth noting (between our feathered friends and primates) is their differentiation between quality and quantity, which “may be unique to birds”.

Carrying lots of food for a bird can be “disadvantageous in flight”, whereas we can easily handle carrying a heavier load. As such, birds aren’t so willing to hold off for more, only for better. I mean, quality not quantity, right? Sounds a little more refined to me.

TL;DR: Crows bait fish. Mic drop.