were on autopilot, acting out a complex set of genetic instructions. Then along came a raven named Hugin.
RAVEN OPENS THE BOX
Celestial Ravens, by Cape Dorset artist Kenojuak Ashevak, 2003.
PARAPHRASED FROM A TEXT PUBLISHED ONLINE BY THE ALASKA NATIVE KNOWLEDGE NETWORK, 1995
I n the beginning, the elders of southwestern Alaska tell us, the world was in darkness. The most powerful being on Earth was Raven. One day, he learned of a beautiful young woman who lived with her father, a great chief, on the banks of the Nass River. She possessed the sun, the moon, and the stars and kept them closely guarded in carved cedar boxes.
The only way to steal these treasures, Raven knew, was to trick the woman and her father. So he turned himself into a hemlock needle, fell into the woman’s cup, and entered her body with a drink of water. Soon she bore a son, whom the chief dearly loved. When the boy (who was really Raven) grew a little older, he pleaded and cried for the box containing the moon and stars. As soon as his grandfather gave them to him, Raven threw them up the smokehole and they scattered across the sky. Although his grandfather was unhappy, he loved the boy too much to punish him for what he had done.
Soon the boy began crying for the other box—the one containing the sun—and again his grandfather gave it to him. Raven played with the box for a long time. Then suddenly he turned himself back into a bird and flew up through the smokehole and out of the house. After a long time, he heard people below him in the darkness.
“Would you like to have light?” he asked them. Then he opened the beautiful box and let sunlight into the world. The people were so frightened that they fled to every corner of the Earth, and that is why Raven’s people are everywhere.
In Aesop’s fable, a “helpful” crow taught his fellow to break a shell by dropping it on a rock and then swooped down to claim the food for himself.
Named for one of the all-knowing birds that served the Norse gods in Valhalla, Hugin was a perfectly ordinary six-year-old male that had been bred in a zoo and raised, with a companion named Munin and a couple of other birds, in an aviary at the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Grünau, Austria. As part of an investigation of social learning, the four ravens were presented with three clusters of film canisters, each marked with yellow, red, or blue. Every day, a different one of the color-coded sets of containers was baited with bits of cheese. The idea was to present the ravens with a problem that would take them some time to solve so that the researchers could make observations at their leisure.
In the event, however, Hugin figured out the rule on the first morning of the trials; after finding one empty box in a cluster, he would move on to the next group until he located the boxes that contained bait. His companion Munin, by contrast, couldn’t even be bothered to look. Instead, as the dominant bird in a group, he preferred to bide his time until Hugin found the
food; then he would muscle in and gobble up one or more of the tasty tidbits. With Munin now hanging around the food source, poor Hugin was out of luck. The more lids he flipped and the more cheese he found, the more Munin benefited.
Socially subordinate though he was, Hugin was no pushover. On the first afternoon of the experiment, he came up with a countermove. When Munin began to press in on him, Hugin would interrupt his foraging, fly over to one of the unrewarded clusters, and start opening empty boxes. He kept at it, opening and opening, until Munin came to join him; then, as soon as he saw his rival nosing around the wrong cluster, Hugin would dash back to the rewarded boxes and take advantage of his head start to grab a few extra morsels. This behavior went on for a week, until Munin caught on to the ruse and refused to be led astray. Having lost his advantage, Hugin threw a tantrum—“He started throwing containers around,”
RAVEN OPENS THE BOX
Celestial Ravens, by Cape Dorset artist Kenojuak Ashevak, 2003.
PARAPHRASED FROM A TEXT PUBLISHED ONLINE BY THE ALASKA NATIVE KNOWLEDGE NETWORK, 1995
I n the beginning, the elders of southwestern Alaska tell us, the world was in darkness. The most powerful being on Earth was Raven. One day, he learned of a beautiful young woman who lived with her father, a great chief, on the banks of the Nass River. She possessed the sun, the moon, and the stars and kept them closely guarded in carved cedar boxes.
The only way to steal these treasures, Raven knew, was to trick the woman and her father. So he turned himself into a hemlock needle, fell into the woman’s cup, and entered her body with a drink of water. Soon she bore a son, whom the chief dearly loved. When the boy (who was really Raven) grew a little older, he pleaded and cried for the box containing the moon and stars. As soon as his grandfather gave them to him, Raven threw them up the smokehole and they scattered across the sky. Although his grandfather was unhappy, he loved the boy too much to punish him for what he had done.
Soon the boy began crying for the other box—the one containing the sun—and again his grandfather gave it to him. Raven played with the box for a long time. Then suddenly he turned himself back into a bird and flew up through the smokehole and out of the house. After a long time, he heard people below him in the darkness.
“Would you like to have light?” he asked them. Then he opened the beautiful box and let sunlight into the world. The people were so frightened that they fled to every corner of the Earth, and that is why Raven’s people are everywhere.
In Aesop’s fable, a “helpful” crow taught his fellow to break a shell by dropping it on a rock and then swooped down to claim the food for himself.
Named for one of the all-knowing birds that served the Norse gods in Valhalla, Hugin was a perfectly ordinary six-year-old male that had been bred in a zoo and raised, with a companion named Munin and a couple of other birds, in an aviary at the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Grünau, Austria. As part of an investigation of social learning, the four ravens were presented with three clusters of film canisters, each marked with yellow, red, or blue. Every day, a different one of the color-coded sets of containers was baited with bits of cheese. The idea was to present the ravens with a problem that would take them some time to solve so that the researchers could make observations at their leisure.
In the event, however, Hugin figured out the rule on the first morning of the trials; after finding one empty box in a cluster, he would move on to the next group until he located the boxes that contained bait. His companion Munin, by contrast, couldn’t even be bothered to look. Instead, as the dominant bird in a group, he preferred to bide his time until Hugin found the
food; then he would muscle in and gobble up one or more of the tasty tidbits. With Munin now hanging around the food source, poor Hugin was out of luck. The more lids he flipped and the more cheese he found, the more Munin benefited.
Socially subordinate though he was, Hugin was no pushover. On the first afternoon of the experiment, he came up with a countermove. When Munin began to press in on him, Hugin would interrupt his foraging, fly over to one of the unrewarded clusters, and start opening empty boxes. He kept at it, opening and opening, until Munin came to join him; then, as soon as he saw his rival nosing around the wrong cluster, Hugin would dash back to the rewarded boxes and take advantage of his head start to grab a few extra morsels. This behavior went on for a week, until Munin caught on to the ruse and refused to be led astray. Having lost his advantage, Hugin threw a tantrum—“He started throwing containers around,”
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