During the 19th century there arose the belief that these were the 'most advanced' birds, based upon the belief that Darwinian evolution brings 'progress'. In such a classification the 'most intelligent' of birds were listed last reflecting their position 'atop the pyramid'. Modern biologists reject the concept of hierarchical 'progress' in evolution [...].
The family Corvidae was introduced by the English Zoologist william Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820. Over the years, much disagreement has arisen on the exact evolutionary relationships of the corvid family and their relatives. What eventually seemed clear was that corvids are derived from Australasian ancestors and from there spread throughout the world. Other lineages derived from these ancestors evolved into ecologically diverse, but often Australasian groups. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Sibley and Ahlquist united the corvids with other taxa in the Corvida, based on DNA–DNA hybridization. The presumed corvid relatives included currawongs, birds of paradise, whipbirds, quail-thrushes, whistlers, monarch flycatchers and drongos, shrikes, vireos, and vangas, but current research favors the theory that this grouping is partly artificial. The corvids constitute the core group of the Corvoidea, together with their closest relatives (the birds of paradise, Australian mud-nesters, and shrikes). They are also the core group of the Corvida, which includes the related groups, such as Old World orioles and vireos.
Corvids are reservoirs (carriers) for the West Nile virus in the United States. They are infected by mosquitoes (the vectors), primarily of the Culex species. Crows and ravens are quickly killed by this disease, so their deaths are an early-warning system when West Nile virus arrives in an area (as are horse and other bird species deaths). One of the first signs that West Nile virus first arrived in the US in 1999 was the death of crows in New York.
Clark's nutcrackers and jackdaws were compared in a 2002 study based on geometric rule learning. The corvids, along with a domestic pigeon, had to locate a target between two landmarks, while distances and landmarks were altered. The nutcrackers were more accurate in their searches than the jackdaws and pigeons.
When compared to dogs and cats in an experiment testing the ability to seek out food according to three-dimensional clues, corvids out-performed the mammals. A meta-analysis testing how often birds invented new ways to acquire food in the wild found corvids to be the most innovative birds. A 2004 review suggests that their cognitive abilities are on par with those of great apes. Despite structural differences, the brains of corvids and great apes both evolved the ability to make geometrical measurements.
Due to their carrion diet, the Celtic peoples strongly associated corvids with war, death and the battlefield – their great intelligence meant that they were often considered messengers, or manifestations of the gods such Bendigeidfran Blessed raven or the Irish Morrigan, underworld deities that may be related to the later Arthurian Fisher King. The Welsh Dream of Rhonabwy illustrates well the association of ravens with war. In many parts of Britain, gatherings of crows, or more often magpies, are counted using the divination rhyme: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. Cornish superstition holds that when a lone magpie is encountered, it must be loudly greeted with respect.
