ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN WATSON
Can animals plan for the future? Can they recall the past? Is a bird as clever as a chimpanzee or a toddler? These are the questions that occupy cognitive scientist and psychologist Nicola Clayton. Inside a nondescript building behind a thatched pub in Madingley, a village outside Cambridge, a flock of crows might give her an answer. One of them, a Eurasian jay named Hoy, blows kisses, while Hoy’s friend Romero says: “I love you.”