<em>Crows seem to be able to use causal reasoning to solve a problem, a feat </em><em>previously undocumented in any other non-human animal</em><em>, including chimps...
</em>

<em>A choice morsel of food was placed in a horizontal Perspex tube, which also featured two round holes in the underside, with Perspex traps below.</em>

<em>For most of the tests, one of the holes was sealed, so the food could be dragged across it with a stick and out of the tube to be eaten. The other hole was left open, trapping the food if the crows moved it the wrong way.</em>

<em>Three of the crows solved the task consistently, even after the team modified the appearance of the equipment. This suggested that these crows weren't using arbitrary features – such as the colour of the rim of a hole – to guide their behaviour. Instead they seemed to understand that if they dragged food across a hole, they would lose it....</em>

<em>A recent study of great apes found they could not transfer success at the trap-tube to success at the trap-table. The three crows could, however.</em>

via <em><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14745-crows-make-monkeys-out-of-chimps-in-mental-test.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&amp;nsref=news9_head_dn14745" target="_blank">New Scientist</a></em>