After months of excitement, apprehension, and anticipation, Netflix’s live-action series The Sandman has finally graced the screens. A resounding success, fans of the comic book are absolutely elated. The show is an outstanding homage and does full justice to the comic books. While the internet is going gaga over the adorable baby gargoyle Irvin/Girvin/Goldie, we’d like to give some love to Matthew the raven.

The imagery of The Sandman, AKA Morpheus, the king of dreams, is incomplete without his raven. The raven is not just another character, but an extra pair of eyes, essentially a part of him. After the death of his first winged companion, Jessamy, Dream is apprehensive about replacing her. However, the fast-talking spirit of Matthew, voiced by Patton Oswalt, ultimately wins him over. We then see a wonderful bond form between the two, giving us all the feels. But what really stood out to us as we streamed the Netflix Original is a question: Can ravens actually talk? Let’s find out.

The Sandman-esque chronicles of a real-life raven

Matthew, the raven from The Sandman, while almost completely CGI, was modeled after actual ravens. To break the enigma of the fascinating yet often misunderstood ravens, the folks at Still Watching Netflix got a real-life raven into the studio. They even invited a bird behavior specialist, Hillary Hankey, for her expertise on the subject.

When asked if ravens can talk, Hilary, to our surprise, replied, “They can mimic.” Talking about their winged guest in the studio, Hankey informed, “He can calk. He mimics human speech as well as other speeches, like native birds.” Ravens belong to the corvid family, along with crows, jays, and magpies. All these are songbirds that have the ability to mimic human speech. Here’s a youtube short showing Linus the raven talking back and showing off his other skills.

While you cannot expect a real raven to have a full-blown dialogue exchange with you like Matthew, “they do learn how to like request something,” said the bird expert. So if you ever get a pet raven, he will most certainly “learn his favorite food” and give you a set of demands. We’d suggest fulfilling those immediately as “they will hold grudges for years” even with no training.

Now, if we could only get Goldie, the gargoyle, to talk, all our dreams would come true. What did you think of The Sandman currently streaming on Netflix? Let us know in the comments.