Queen of the corvids: the scientist fighting to save the world's brainiest birds

[Judi Lynn]

Will Coldwell
@will_coldwell
Sun 19 Jun 2022 09.00 EDT

Leo, an 18-year-old rook, is playing mind games. It’s a street-corner classic – cups and balls. Only this time the venue is the Comparative Cognition Laboratory in Madingley, Cambridge, and the ball is a waxworm. Leo – poised, pointy, determined – is perched on a wooden platform eager to place his bet. A wriggling morsel is laid under one of three cups, the cups shuffled. Leo cocks his head and takes a stab. Success! He snatches the waxworm in his beak and retreats to enjoy his prize. Aristotle, a fellow resident donned in a glossy black feather coat, who has been at the aviary almost as long as the lab itself, looks on knowingly.

Watching alongside me is Professor Nicola Clayton, a psychologist who founded the lab 22 years ago, and we are joined by Francesca Cornero, 25, a PhD researcher (and occasional cups and balls technician). Clayton, 59, who is short, with blonde hair, large glasses and is wearing loose, black tango trousers, studies the cognitive abilities of both animals and humans, but is particularly known for her seminal research into the intelligence of corvids (birds in the crow family, which includes rooks, jays, magpies and ravens). Corvids have long proved to be at odds with the “bird-brain” stereotype endured by most feathered creatures and her lab, a cluster of four large aviaries tucked behind a thatched pub, has paved the way for new theories about the evolution and development of intelligence. Thanks to Clayton’s own eclectic tastes, which span consciousness to choreography (her other love, besides birds, is dance), the lab also engenders a curious synthesis of ideas drawn from both science and the arts.

For Clayton, who has hand-reared many of the 25 jays and four rooks that live at the lab herself, the birds are like family. She introduces me to Hoy and Romero, a pair of Eurasian jays, and greets her test subjects with affection. “Hello, sweetpeas,” she says, in a sing-song soprano. “I love you.” Hoy responds by blowing kisses: a squeaky mwah mwah. Many corvids, like parrots, can mimic human speech. One of Clayton’s fondest memories of the lab is when a young Romero said: “I love you,” back. To Clayton, the Comparative Cognition Lab is more than just an aviary, or a place of scientific research. It’s a “corvid palace”. And having presided over it for more than two decades, Clayton, undoubtedly, is its queen.

But all is not well in her kingdom. Last year she learned that the lab would not have its grant renewed by the European Research Council. Her application had been made amid the turmoil of Brexit and Clayton believes she is now among a growing number of academics facing funding complications as a result of the UK’s departure from the EU. The pandemic has only exacerbated the challenge of finding alternative financing. And while the university has supported the lab in the meantime, at the end of July, this money is also due to cease. Without a benefactor, Clayton’s lab is on borrowed time. The corvid palace faces closure. Her clever birds, released or rehomed. A lab that has transformed our understanding of animal cognition – and continues to reveal new secrets – soon may no longer exist. “Obviously, I’m emotionally attached,” she says, looking fondly up at Hoy and Romero, “so showing people the birds at the moment is very difficult.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/19/queen-of-corvids-the-scientist-fighting-to-save-the-worlds-brainiest-birds

[Martin68]

1. Conrad Lorenz spent decades studying rooks, and laid the foundation for our understanding of

their intelligence. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior. I highly recommend his book, "King Solomon's Ring."