Corvus corax means raven twice—once Latin, once Greek
The common or northern raven is the most widely distributed corvid, an all-black passerine across the Northern Hemisphere. Genus Corvus is Latin for raven; corax Latinizes Greek korax, which also means raven—a taxonomic echo chamber of names.
Humans and ravens have shared landscapes for millennia; in some regions numbers rose until people called them pests. Their success rests on an omnivorous diet of carrion, insects, grain, berries and small animals. Cultures from Scandinavia, ancient Ireland and Wales to Bhutan, Siberia and North America's northwest coast have revered the raven as a spiritual or godlike figure. Linnaeus described the species with a European type locality in his eighteenth-century Systema Naturae.
Adults measure 54 to 71 centimetres with wingspans up to 153 centimetres and weigh as much as 2.25 kilograms, making the raven one of the heaviest passerines. It differs from crows in its heavier bill, shaggy throat feathers and wedge-shaped tail, and it soars with fewer wingbeats. Researchers have logged 15 to 30 call types, mostly social; ravens can mimic human speech, and a bird that loses its mate may repeat the partner's calls to lure it back. Birds from cold places such as the Himalayas and Greenland run larger, and the Faroe Islands once had a pied colour form, now extinct.
Having evolved in the Old World, the species reached North America over the Bering land bridge. DNA splits it into a Holarctic clade and a California clade, the latter closer to the Chihuahuan raven than to other common ravens, though a 2011 study found the two lineages still interbreed freely. It holds the largest range in its genus, from Arctic tundra to North African deserts and Pacific islands; in Britain it is spreading again under legal protection despite illegal persecution by gamekeepers.
Source: Common raven
