I don't want to suggest that this isn't very cool, but there was one thing about it that bugged me a little.
The researcher put the cylinder in the cage, and after the rook comes over to investigate, the researcher comes back and puts a handful of rocks right next to the cylinder. That seems like it would suggest to the rook that there's some connection between the cylinder and the rocks.
Again, it's still very impressive (especially considering the speed with which the bird puts two and two together), but it's not quite the same as the bird thinking, on its own, "Hey, you know what would help with this puzzle? Those rocks that appeared last week on the other side of my cage."
There's a whole lot of videos on the BBC site (and presumably on youtube as well) about all the interesting things that crows can do with the tools at hand (or beak).
I thought this from the article was the most impressive:
In the experiment, described in Current Biology, the rooks proved highly accurate, placing in only the precise number of stones needed to raise the water level to a reachable height. Instead of trying to get the worm after each stone was dropped, they apparently estimated the number required from the outset and waited until the time was right [LiveScience]
But in the video, I see the rook checking after each rock if it can reach the worm yet.
One of the things I thought after watching this is if Archimedes could have been inspired/influenced by noticing the crow's behavior or by Aesop's fable.
That's a pretty dim view of humanity-- do you really think that no one before Archimedes realized that stones displace water? Archimedes' "Eureka!" moment was a bit more profound than that.
1) The vending machine doesn't exist in the way it's presented
2) He never actually performed substantive experiments
3) The few trials he actually did were total failures
* and mostly involved captive crows, indoors!
4) What little real research exists is not his
* The actual researchers divorced themselves from him
5) He's a new media douchebag in ITP at NYU, not a biologist of any sort
The whole thing is Gladwellian just-so bullshit on so many levels, and the hype from the NYT and TED really pushed it over the top.
The researcher put the cylinder in the cage, and after the rook comes over to investigate, the researcher comes back and puts a handful of rocks right next to the cylinder. That seems like it would suggest to the rook that there's some connection between the cylinder and the rocks.
Again, it's still very impressive (especially considering the speed with which the bird puts two and two together), but it's not quite the same as the bird thinking, on its own, "Hey, you know what would help with this puzzle? Those rocks that appeared last week on the other side of my cage."