Crows need extra mental effort to switch to calling
Researchers at the University of Tübingen studied how carrion crows switch between calling and pecking. They found the birds can alternate flexibly, but switching to calling puts greater demands on their brains.
The work, led by Liao and colleagues, is peer-reviewed and appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It suggests that controlling vocal output takes extra mental effort in crows. The finding comes from one study of one species, so it may not apply to other birds.