I have noticed Hedgehogs and Magpies crossing the street at the crosswalks forcing the traffic to stop. At first I thought it was coincidence but I have seen it so often that I am beginning to think they are learning from us how to survive in the city. After all we have outcrowded them and they are trying to get along and survive. There are many examples of this, like stray dogs that learn to take the subway for example. Animals have to develope new survival skills and invent solutions as they go along. Have you also seen examples of this where you live?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/Technology/stray-dogs-master-complex-moscow-subway-system/story?id=10145833#.TydSJMXj4Zk
Animal Intelligence
Author Eugene Linden, who has been writing about animal intelligencefor 40 years, told ABC News that Moscow’s resourceful stray dogs are just one of what are now thousands of recorded examples of wild, feral anddomesticated animals demonstrating what appears, at least, to be what humans might call flexible open-ended reasoning and conscious thought.
Linden cites a wide variety of creatures ranging from captive orangutans and otters who frequently and slyly “trade” with their keepers, to a British cat famous for regularly taking the bus to a squirrel in Oklahoma who became a local hero when people began to notice that it regularly obeyed traffic signals when crossing a busy street.
“The take-away is that animals are not just passive in this,” Linden told ABC News. “They are figuring out what we’re about and how they can game the system, and work it to their advantage as well.”
Moscow’s strays have also been observed obeying traffic lights, says Vereshchagin. He and Poyarkov report the strays have developed a variety of techniques for hunting food in the wild metropolis.
Sometimes a pack will send out a smaller, cuter member apparently realizing it will be more successful at begging than its bigger, less attractive counterparts.
