Mern Þonke

I must take time out from the pile of grading I have before me to relay part of a story from The Economist on avian theories of the mind. The article tells of an experiment by Thomas Bugnyar of the University of Vermont published last month in Animal Cognition, which “suggests that ravens may have mastered the art of deception.” The experiment is described by The Economist as follows:

Dr Bugnyar was conducting an experiment designed to see what ravens learn from each other while foraging. While doing so he noticed strange interactions between two males, Hugin, a subordinate bird, and Munin, a dominant one.

The task was to work out which colour-coded film containers held some bits of cheese, then prise the containers open and eat the contents. The subordinate male was far better at this task than the dominant. However, he never managed to gulp down more than a few pieces of the reward before the dominant raven, Munin, was hustling him on his way. Clearly (and not unexpectedly) ravens are able to learn about food sources from one another. They are also able to bully each other to gain access to that food.

But then something unexpected happened. Hugin, the subordinate, tried a new strategy. As soon as Munin bullied him, he headed over to a set of empty containers, prised the lids off them enthusiastically, and pretended to eat. Munin followed, whereupon Hugin returned to the loaded containers and ate his fill.
At first Dr Bugnyar could not believe what he was seeing. He was anxious about sharing his observation, for fear that no one would believe him. But Hugin, he is convinced, was clearly misleading Munin.

As it happened, Munin was no dummy either. He soon grew wise to the tactic, and would not be led astray. He even stooped to trying to find the food rewards on his own! This made Hugin furious. “He got very angry”, says Dr Bugnyar, “and started throwing things around.” Perhaps ravens have something else in common with people—a hatred of being found out.

Medievalists will get the joke immediately: Hugin and Munin are the two ravens of the Norse god Odin, who probably survive in the fourteenth-century English poem Havelok the Dane as Hugh Raven, the hero’s foster-brother. Hugh Raven is the son of Grim, whose name, according to Edmund Reiss, derives from Grimnir ‘disguise’ a nickname for Odin.* To the extent that the adoption of a disguise is a form of deception, the ravens in the experiment discussed above are apparently partaking in the time-honoured tricks of their mythological name-sakes’ master. Did the ancient Scandinavians observe the same behaviours as Dr Bugnyar?

* Edmund Reiss, “Havelok the Dane and Norse Mythology,” Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966): 115-124. For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on Hugin and Munin, which contains a quote from Grimnismal.