Hello, Lloyd, hello.
Hello, Bran.
Now Lloyd, do you get the feeling that
Bran uses information
about where you're looking?
Yes, very much so.
Can we see an example of that, Lloyd?
We certainly can.
Now Bran has a special stone,
he knows that word,
and it's hidden somewhere in this room.
So if I let him eat that piece of food
and say "Where's your stone, Bran, where is it?"
And he's looking. And then if I look.
Where's your stone, Bran?
No, he did, he was really looking at...
He looked around and then
looked where you were looking.
Yes.
- And now...
Let's just, Bran!
That's a good boy, thank you very much.
Luckily Bran chose the person in the room
we know is most easily scared. So that was good.
You going to be OK?
That's amazing. But why would ravens be
particularly good at this ability to understand
what it means when
something is looking somewhere?
Well it could be because it's a very useful way of helping them solve problems.
And these are birds that have to solve a lot of problems in the world, aren't they?
Before we actually go into an example of this, we're just going to show you
how good Bran is at solving problems.
And we've got here a puzzle box Bran hasn't seen before.
It's got some food in it that Bran's going to want.
And what we're going to do is show it to him and he's going to work out
how to solve the problem of getting through to the stuff he wants in the middle.
Is that OK? Are we alright to begin?
- We certainly are
Go on Bran, go there.
So he's got to work out how to get into that.
Unbelievable.
That's it. - Yes!
I've made it hard for him. This is not an easy one.
He just gave us a right look, like ugh, come on.
So he's got to pull the string? - Yep.
This is an emotional rollercoaster.
He got it. - Oh, there we go! Fantastic.
Well done, Bran.
Now in the wild, a bird like Bran has got to solve puzzles and problems all the time,
and one of them is - there are lots of other birds like Bran out there
who are also very clever so when Bran wants to hide his food,
he has got to find some way of tricking other birds, if they're looking at him.
Now I've got a clip of a bird doing some deception.
The bird's using communication to lie to other birds
but Bran really dislikes videos so we're going to say
thank you to Lloyd and thank you to the extremely clever Bran before we show that.
Thank you.
This is a bird that is being watched by other birds who all saw her bury her food earlier.
Now she knows they're no longer watching, she's hiding the food elsewhere.
This is typical of raven and crow behaviour.
So this is an example of the ravens using their understanding of eye gaze
to help them solve the problem of how they stop other ravens from stealing all their food.
And it's an interesting point that what you're seeing is them using deception
as a way of covering up what they really want to do.
And of course deception is still a form of communication.