Youre next, human

Way back in the late 80s, when I was working at a construction site in Mindanao, we used to have fun with ravens. When we spotted a flock of them flying overhead, we took a stick, or sometimes just our hands, and pointed it at them, and they would immediately take evasive action, swerving, diving, changing their speed, and do all sorts of maneuvers. It's their reaction to someone pointing something at them, having learned that sometimes when humans point something at you, it would go bang and you'd be dead a few moments later. Pretty smart birds, I thought.

Now in a scene right out of Hitchcock's The Birds, flocks of ravens are attacking livestock.

"It's like something out of a horror film. They are horrible,
horrible birds. They see the young lambs and just fly down and help
themselves," he said.

"Sometimes you find a carcass with the eyes and tongue pecked
out, but sometimes all you find is the skin. They peck away until
nothing is left." And while some animals have been pecked to death,
others have been left to die in agony after birds have feasted on their
eyes, tongues and the soft flesh of their underbellies.

No doubt some raven discovered that these animals are pretty tasty and easy to kill and the hunting technique was quickly picked up by other ravens, like they did with the evasive maneuver trick.

Research published last year in the Scientific American also showed the
raven to be one of the most intelligent species on the planet - up
there with dolphins and apes and, unlike most other birds and animals,
capable of learning from their own actions and from observing others'
behaviour.

Lambs, sheep, calves. Pretty soon theyll be attacking babies like some chimps learned to do in Africa. Some Brit nanny goes indoors to answer a phone call, and when she comes out...

Experts cannot give a definitive explanation, but some believe it is
simply the pressure on food resources caused by the dramatically
increasing raven population.

No doubt. It's illegal in Britain to kill the ravens. But that could change pretty soon. (By the way, kudos to the reporter and said experts for not blaming global warming.)