Are Ravens Smarter Than Crows?

Raven and crow side by side showing corvid intelligence

Introduction: A friendly rivalry in black feathers

Ravens and crows are the rock stars of the bird world: glossy, a little theatrical, and endlessly curious. People love to ask which is smarter, as if the two are facing off under a spotlight.

This post takes a gentle, evidence-based tour of their smarts: what researchers measure, where each species shines, and what “smarter” even means when it comes to birds with clever beaks.

Meet the contestants

Ravens in a nutshell

Ravens (typically the common raven, Corvus corax) are large, long-winged corvids with deep voices and a flair for dramatic flights. They live across the Northern Hemisphere and thrive in wild, open habitats as well as near humans.

Crows in a nutshell

Crows (often the American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, or the carrion crow in other regions) are sleeker and more habituated to cities. They form tight social groups and are masters at living alongside people.

How scientists measure bird intelligence

“Smarts” is a slippery word, so researchers break it down into measurable skills: problem-solving, tool use, social learning, memory, and communication.

Different tests reveal different strengths. A bird that excels at dropping nuts on roads might not be the fastest at mimicry, but both are clever in their own ways.

Head-to-head: Where ravens tend to excel

Big-brain behaviors

Ravens score highly on several measures that suggest flexible, innovative thinking. They are famous for:

Complex problem-solving, including multi-step tasks.
Using and modifying tools in naturalistic settings.
Impressive play behavior—using objects simply for fun, which often indicates advanced cognition.

Social manipulation and planning

Ravens plan ahead in experiments: caching food and moving caches when observed by others. This suggests they understand the intentions of nearby birds and adjust their behavior accordingly.

If you enjoy the mysterious side of ravens, there’s a lovely exploration of their cultural and symbolic meanings in the spiritual meaning of ravens, which captures how their intelligence has long sparked human imagination.

Where crows shine

Everyday ingenuity

Crows are consummate urban adapters. Their intelligence shows up in ways we see around neighborhoods and parks: solving food puzzles, learning to take advantage of human tools, and remembering friendly or unfriendly faces.

For a deep dive into their cognitive tricks and problem-solving tests, see our piece on how smart are crows, which walks through classic experiments and surprising discoveries.

Culture, teaching, and memory

Crows have cultural traditions: populations develop local techniques and pass them down across generations, a hallmark of social intelligence.

They also remember human faces for years and can teach other crows about threats, which makes them formidable community members in both forest and cityscapes.

Different strengths, not a simple winner

When you line up the evidence, it becomes clear that ravens and crows are both smart in overlapping but distinct ways. Ravens often outperform on tasks requiring solitary innovation and foresight.

Crows frequently outperform in social learning, adaptability to human environments, and transmissible culture.

What specific experiments tell us

Tool use and multi-step problems

In controlled tasks, ravens have solved puzzles requiring several steps, showing an ability to plan actions in sequence. That looks like a kind of thinking about the future.

Social reasoning experiments

Both species show awareness of other minds to an extent. Ravens might hide caches from a watching bird, while crows will scold and recruit allies when a threat appears—different social strategies tuned to different lifestyles.

Brain size and structure

Corvids have large brains relative to body size, and neuroscientists often point to the nidopallium caudolaterale (an area analogous to parts of mammalian prefrontal cortex) as important for problem-solving.

Ravens have slightly larger brains in absolute terms because they are bigger birds, but relative brain measures across corvids are all impressive—so “bigger” is only part of the story.

Ecology shapes cognition

Intelligence is shaped by lifestyle. Ravens often live in more variable, less human-dominated environments where solo innovation and caching can help survival.

Crows thrive in human-altered spaces where flexible social learning and opportunistic foraging are prized. What natural selection rewards depends on the challenges a species faces.

Play, curiosity, and personality

Both ravens and crows play with objects, engage in aerial acrobatics, and show individual personalities. Play is an underappreciated sign of cognitive complexity.

Ravens may be more demonstrative in play, but crows display everyday cleverness in ways that are visible to city dwellers and naturalists alike.

Practical takeaways: what “smarter” actually means for you

If you want birds that do spectacular, attention-grabbing feats in lab tasks, ravens often steal the show.
If you notice clever behaviors at your local park—tool use with garbage, problem-solving around cars, long memories—those are the hallmarks of crow intelligence in action. Our list of ten amazing facts about crows highlights many everyday ways they surprise us.
Both species deserve admiration for different reasons. The question “who’s smarter?” turns out to be less interesting than “how are they smart?”

Fun facts and surprising behaviors

Ravens have been observed using teamwork to distract or manipulate other animals.
Crows sometimes use cars as nutcrackers—placing nuts on roads and waiting for a vehicle to crack them open.
Both species recognize individuals, remember past events, and can problem-solve collaboratively or alone.

How to watch and appreciate their smarts

Spend time watching a small group of corvids. Notice patterns: who leads, who watches, how they react to new objects.

Keeping a simple notebook of observations will illuminate subtle forms of intelligence that experiments don’t always capture.

Final thought: intelligence as a tapestry

Rather than a tidy scoreboard, think of raven and crow intelligence as a tapestry woven from different threads—innovation, social learning, memory, and curiosity.

Both birds are marvels of evolution. If the debate encourages you to look closer at the crows in your neighborhood or the ravens on a wind-swept ridge, then it’s already done something good: inviting curiosity.