Crows, ravens, and jays demonstrate tool use, planning, and social intelligence requiring specific consideration in wildlife management and captive situations.
Corvids represent an important test case for how we extend welfare consideration based on cognitive complexity. Their intelligence equals or exceeds that of great apes in several measures, placing them among the most cognitively sophisticated non-human animals known. This has implications for both captive corvid welfare (requiring environmental and cognitive enrichment commensurate with their capacities) and for wildlife management (raising questions about the welfare significance of corvid pest control). As wild animals with complex social and cognitive lives, corvids experiencing persecution or habitat loss face welfare harms that their intelligence makes more significant.