A crow lays a nut in front of a car stopped at a fire. The vehicle leaves, rolls on the hull, and the bird can recover fragments. This scenario is not based only on a funny video: a Japanese study published in 1995 examines the variations.
Yoshiaki Nihei describes forty-three documented occurrences in detail over the course of twenty-one months of observation. The selected location, the repositioning of the nut, the waiting and the abandonment are among the elements compared. The whole leads the author to consider the behavior as systematic rather than a happy coincidence.
Some nuts resist the falls that birds cause by letting them go from above. The passage of a vehicle then offers another possibility. This does not prove that crows know our code of the road; it reveals an ingenious exploitation of human regularities. The driver believes he is crossing a crossroads. Maybe he just made a meal.
What we know
Observations of black crows in a specific study; no general control of traffic rules is deduced.
To go to the source
References consulted on September 21, 2026. Linked pages may be in another language.
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