JEDDAH, 11 March 2006 — Crows have a reputation for being intelligent animals. In 2002, animal-behavior specialists even discovered that crows had improvised tool-making abilities that put chimpanzees to shame.

It seems now that they’re also putting to shame humans, specifically teams from the Kingdom’s Agriculture Ministry who began last week setting poison traps for the birds considered by many to be noisy nuisances.

Last week the municipality of Jeddah with the ministry’s help began a crow-abatement program. The problem is that the crafty creatures aren’t falling for the traps. City workers are claiming that the crows are simply not taking the bait.

Awad Al-Qahtani, a municipal health protection manager, speculated that the crows have observed other birds eating the poison and dying, and are simply learning to avoid the poison.

The teams administered a different poison that takes effect after about eight hours but, still, the crows somehow are avoiding the poison like the plague. City officials have considered finding and destroying nests, but they are difficult to find. A plan to simply prune trees of “nest-able” limbs was scrapped over concerns about killing the trees.

Jaber Al-Shehri, the manager of the Agriculture Ministry in the Makkah area, wanted to emphasize that the campaign has nothing to do with avian flu. Although last week Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, manager of public relations at the municipality, said that the ministries are participating in controlling the spread of crows as part of the precautionary steps toward the prevention of avian flu in the Kingdom. He did not explain why crows would be singled out among birds.

The campaign started after the municipality received many complaints from residents regarding the cacophony crows make in large numbers, Al-Qahtani told Al-Watan daily.

Crows of various species are found worldwide and are widely considered to be the craftiest of birds. They have achieved mythological status for their craftiness in some indigenous North American mythologies. Wildlife hobbyists tell stories of crows learning how to open bags to get to food, and that they tend to be attracted to shiny objects, like keys.

Researchers published a paper in the August 2002 issue of Science magazine, showing the birds’ abilities to improvise tools out of pieces of wire to extract food from long tubes. The research also showed other crows’ abilities to observe, learn, and replicate the tool-making behavior.

It seems now that the crows of Jeddah are using this brainpower to outsmart city workers.