Ravens are well capable of understanding different types of social relationships like friendship, kinship and partnership as well. Yes, this is what a new study by researchers led by Thomas Bugnyar of the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna has figured out.

Also, it was found by the researchers that ravens form strict dominance relations. The scientists said that findings of the study should not be trivialized as it is important to understand one's own relationships to others as it enables to know who is nice and who is not.

The researchers also came across the ability of ravens to keep track of the rank relations of their group members.

The researchers used a playback design to allow individuals hear a dominance interaction between two other ravens. There were two aspects of these interactions, either they were in accordance with the existing dominance hierarchy in that group or a possible rank reversal was reflected by them, where a low-ranking individual was showing off to a bird of higher rank.

In the case of rank reversal, ravens reacted strongly with information seeking and stress-related behaviors. Exposure to conflicting dominance roles led the ravens to turn their heads and shake their bodies, which means that their expectations were violated. The reaction of the ravens to simulated rank reversals was same for those in the neighboring group as for their own group.

So, it can be rightly said that ravens are capable of deducing other's rank relations just by watching them. "As the birds in our experiment never had any physical contact with their neighboring group and could only see and hear them, these results suggest that ravens also have mental representations about others", said study author Jorg Massen of the University of Vienna in a statement.