The crows that built this nest are revealed as the ‘thieves’ who have been raiding a local compound and stealing wire hangers recently. (AN photo by Roger Harrison)

JEDDAH, 26 March 2004 — The residents of a Jeddah compound were puzzled recently over the apparent theft of wire coat hangers from balconies, clotheslines and rubbish bags. It wasn’t the financial implications that concerned the victims, but more the mental capacity and ambitions of the thief in stealing something so useless.

Local research uncovered a thriving trade in recycled wire coat hangers. The “bin-ladies” who retrieve recyclable articles from skips around Jeddah collect used wire coat hangers. After being cleaned and painted, they are sold to many of the laundries in Jeddah. Had the collectors of hangers been scavenging the compound for a new supply source?

It turns out that the culprits were a pair of hooded crows, proving that they are not so bird-brained after all.

Crows belong to the family Corvidae and are believed to be the most intelligent of all birds. Controlled experiments have conclusively demonstrated that they have a tool-making ability in the wild, forming twigs and scraps of bark into hooked probes to retrieve grubs from trees.

Whether the pair of crows had made the cognitive connection of “hanging” coat hangers on drying lines for “hanging” their nest securely to their chosen tree is debatable. But the construction, even if untidy by most people’s standards, is effective.