Okay BBC, we get it already, crows use sticks for stuff. (And if you are in any doubt of this then you can recursively follow the 'See Also' links to read this same story repeated over and over across the last decade. Seriously, does somebody at the BBC have a crow fetish? Is there some kind of New Caledonian lobby group?)

Thing is, I actually once found myself in the lab where a lot of this stuff comes from, and I got the distinct impression that they shoot a staggering amount of footage, only a tiny fraction of which contains any evidence of tool use whatsoever. So - and I appreciate this is a longshot - but has anybody here had any experience with this work and would be willing to put the headlines in context? Are crows really all that clever and/or are they just easier to keep than some other animals? Is there any hint of confirmation bias here? And if they are so smart why have I never seen a crow run for Governor of California?

EDIT: To expand/elucidate/refine:

1. How clever are crows relative to other animals?

2. To what extent may practical issues of experimenting with crows have biased the public perception of Q1?

3. To what extent may media reporting have biased the public perception of Q1? (e.g. how representative are the small sample of videos that we in the public see of general crow behaviour?)