In Iqaluit on fairly cold days the ravens would jump off the high rise on one particular side of the building, on that side at the foot of the building there was a heat vent or HVAC or something and they’d plunge until they’d pop open their wings and then they’d ride the thermals back up to the top of the building.
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‘bigger’ === ‘smarter’ isn’t necessarily always true, although it tends towards true.
Yes some brains, even in humans by the way, are wired to be sensitive to certain aspects of the environment that those brains find themselves in. For example western, modern human brains are pretty good at navigating a world of straight lines, right angles. The modern world of cities. The brains of many indigenous, bush, tribes people are not so good at that. They are much better at filtering the natural environments those brains find themselves in.
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Did you check out any of the many sources quoted above you? Crows are smart, this is fact, them having fun is no more questionable than apes having fun, or people.
While I firmly believe many species are significantly more self-aware and intelligent than most humans give them credit for (and crows are exceptionally smart) it really looks to me like this little guy has found some kind of lid with something tasty frozen around the inside, and has picked a tricky place to try and extract it. But I’d be happy to find out he’s actually, genuinely playing.
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Crowabunga dude!
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Silly bird, I would trade 1000 snowboards to be able to fly!
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Most of time I don’t have much clue about what I’m doing or why 
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Not to mention the intentional flipping over of the lid so the smooth side is down when the concave side doesn’t seem to slip either.
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All this invocation of intent makes me want to bring up the problem of free will.
Who says we have one iota more free will than a crow? Could be, this crow has invented tobogganing for the same reason Rupert Murdoch owes us a civilisation: the initial perturbations of the Big Bang.
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And at the same time these guys at least don’t have to worry about NSA spying, Corporate Power Grabs, what console I should buy, If my Bitcoins are a flash in the pan, etc…
At least if we get it all catastrophically wrong they’ll be a BIG! crow party, stripping the flesh of our superior bones.
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I’m sorry if you don’t know what playing looks like. This was definitely playtime for that crow. He was noodling around, feeling the feels.
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I’m just worried that they’ll hurt themselves. I think these crows need helmets, harnesses and special umbrellas! 
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I propose radio collars with GPS locators so that planes can avoid hitting any of them.
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Is that the pilot episode where Penny first moves into her apartment?
I bet you’re fun at parties…
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That’s right, only the good kind of selection bias is acceptable on bb.
Now these guys also look fun, fun, fun!!!
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And here I always assumed that we did things like snowboarding because we never figured out how to fly.
Yeah, doesn’t look a lot like play to me either. You could post 100 ‘crows having fun’ videos, just as you could post 100 ‘angry crow’ videos. They’re smart enough to do both and a whole lot more besides.
This one looked more like he/she was trying to get something outta the lid.
As an aside; there was a crow in an aviary near where my grandmother lived when i was a kid, that could talk every bit as good as a parrot. Of course it was mostly the swear words it picked up though.
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