In another experiment, this one on “causal intervention,” the crows didn’t fare so well. Causal intervention is a step beyond causal understanding. It involves seeing something transpire in the world and then acting to create the same effect. Say, for example, you’ve never shaken a fruit tree to release the fruit. But one day, you see the wind blowing a branch, causing the fruit to fall. And from that observation, you infer that if you shake the branch, you can act like the wind and make the fruit fall.
