After showing a video of a crow retrieving a snack from the bottom of a tube by using a piece of perfectly bent wire, Dr. John Marzluff, professor emeritus of wildlife science at the University of Washington, had the large crowd gathered before him on a Wyoming snow day listening intently.

The jet black bird takes a piece of wire and bends the end to make a hook. Then she uses the new tool to lift her treat from the unreachable basket at the bottom of the tube. The audience gasped at the results.

"This is what these birds do. They solve problems," Marzluff said. "The thing that I find interesting here is not so much the tool use, because we knew they used tools. But the manufacturer of a unique tool to solve this new problem suggests there's insight involved."

You're not likely to see one of a handful of intelligent birds species known as corvids driving a side-by-side to the Pit Stop any time soon. Especially this bird. It was a New Caledonia crow, native to the French territory that goes by the same name; an archipelago of islands located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, approximately 750 miles east of Australia. But you can't circle Park County without seeing several species of corvids.

Ravens, crows, species of jays, magpies and nutcrackers are all common corvids in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Interestingly, corvids aren't the most popular species in the ecosystem. You don't have to look far to find a Wyomingnite with a beef with ravens or magpies.

For some, corvids have too big of brain for their own good. The fact is, corvids are among the smartest birds. Their brains are unusually large for the size of animal: Marzluff said they have brains the size of monkeys.

"Our American crow has a brain about the size you would expect for a small monkey," he said. "In that respect, I think of these guys as flying monkeys, rather than just flying birds. They have brain power. They also have a lot of nerve cells, neurons packed into that brain much more than we do, and not in terms of total volume, but in terms of mammals. Birds have much more neurons packed into their small brains than mammals do."

This allows corvids to have good memories and the ability to learn. Combine that with long lives and you get some wise, old birds. Birds lasting 20 years in the wild are not all that uncommon, he said about crows and ravens.

"The bottom line is, [a corvid’s brain] works just like yours does. It's organized differently, but we know it has centers for advanced learning and integration of sensory inputs just like yours does, so that you can put things together that you hear and see or smell and associate those with places or experiences and recall those later. They do that the same way you do it," he said.

Award winning wildlife cinematographer Bob Landis took a video at Yellowstone National Park's Canyon Visitor Center of a raven last summer that was riding cars. It would sit in the parking lot of the gas station and jump on a car. The car would take off, but the bird would stay on the car and just ride it until it got to full speed out on the loop highway — like a child on a roller coaster wanting to do it over and over.

"They can have fun," Marzluff said. "They play like this because they get an endorphin release in their brain that rewards this behavior just like yours. When you play, you get a charge out of it. You enjoy it. It's pleasurable. And those chemicals that reward your brain for pleasurable activities are the same chemicals that reward a bird's brain for doing these things."

Love them or hate them, corvids have evolved with humans in what scientists call cultural coevolution. These birds have had a profound influence on us, Marzluff said.

"From day one, we were probably scavengers, right with them initially, then we were predators that provided for them as well, and agriculturists, and they've influenced our thoughts and legends and dances and language," he said. "For those birds to be able to learn and to live with humans, which crows and ravens are experts at, it pays to recognize people, because people aren't all friendly with crows."

Marzluff and his team decided to do a test. They put on two different masks; one of a caveman wearing a baseball hat and one of the former vice president, Dick Cheney. They wore the caveman masks while they trapped and banded the birds and the Cheney mask was worn as a control mask. Having not had a bad experience of being trapped by those in the Cheney mask, they paid it no mind as the team wore the masks around campus. But when they wore the caveman masks, they were surprised by the results of the 10-year experiment.

"They were scolding us. They were diving at us, chasing us and acting just like we were an eagle or a hawk in their territory — trying to push us out of their territory," he said.

For more than 15 years the team experienced this hostility to the caveman and baseball hat combination. Luckily for Dick Cheney, they didn't use masks of him to net the birds.

They demonstrated that the reactions were due in part because of social learning and part individual memory. One bird in particular — one of the seven birds they trapped and banded, scolded them every time she saw them with that mask on. But if Marzluff didn't have the mask on near her territory, she never scolded them.

"She never responded at all. But she hated that caveman. That culture of hate was spread through the population from her kids learning, seeing her scold other person, hearing the scolding vocalizations and coming in and seeing us being scolded, and learning that it was that weird looking guy with the caveman mask on that was being scolded," he said.

Scientists continue to study the birds, but one thing that puzzles them are crow funerals. Crows and magpies will gather around a dead bird from the flock and might even bury that animal.

"They could be assessing who died. Is there a potential mating opportunity coming up? Or a new territory open? Is something dangerous here? Why is it dangerous? Or maybe they're feeling sad about it," he said.

During investigation of a crow funeral, there was just one bird that brought in this piece of foil and laid it by this dead bird and stood there for 20 minutes.

"I would put money [on] the dead bird was that bird's mate," Marzluff said. "At least part of why these birds gather and have funerals around fallen colleagues is to learn about the danger that could be there. There may be lots of other things going on, but we don't know."

There are multiple studies ongoing about corvids, including a long-term study of pinion jays by the team at the museum. Many of them show just how intelligent the birds are. Unfortunately, Marzluff said, that makes them targets.

For example, corvids are killed by the tens of thousands every year to reduce their impact on species like greater sage grouse. While we know ravens will raid nests, is it really the sage grouse that draws them in or is it a nearby landfill or water treatment plant near sage grouse nesting grounds?

"I would say before we pull the trigger on an animal like this, we should understand and celebrate our coevolutionary relationship with it. Think about why they're there. Why are they affecting sage grouse more than the resources that are attracting the birds there? It could be a water treatment plant. That's why they're going there," he said. "Think about the whole pattern, the whole process and take that into account before we just try to kill as many of these animals as we can."

April's Lunchtime Lecture at the Draper Museum of Natural History will feature the Wyoming Game and Fish Department fisheries biologist Jason Burckhardt as he speaks about the suppression of an illegally introduced walleye population to sustain a wild trout fishery in Buffalo Bill Reservoir.