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When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

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Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#161

Post by chrisseaton »

goda90 wrote: post #133
krashnburn200 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can mouse poop, but it's extraordinarily rare so no one really worries about it, well no one sane. Err present company excluded ;) http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/ It's rare enough that individual cases end up on TV.

I took a wilderness survival course in college that included multiple days in the wilderness for the final. In over 40 years there had only been two deaths. One was dehydration due to a stupid fad diet and the other was hantavirus. It looks like the flu until it's too late. So if you are around mice droppings and get flu like symptoms soon after, get to a doctor soon.

> I took a wilderness survival course in college

That's interesting - do you mean as a part of a social club, or actual scholarly study of survival techniques? Or maybe to support a major in something like archeology? Or maybe a military college?

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#162

Post by arviewer »

John23832 wrote: post #147

This may sound weird, but in the country (rural Virginia) we already kind of knew this. If you had a farm and crows get in your crops, the solution was to shoot a crow and leave it. The rest of the crows would stay and circle, but they would leave the crops alone. * Not advocating violence against animals. Just sharing that tidbit.

Oh I thought that made an easy target!

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#163

Post by someone7x »

thedoctor79 wrote: post #148
carapace wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't downvote, it's true. Animals can read your thoughts. The mechanism seems to be that they can see your visualizations: I can call my sister's cat in from outside "telepathically" by clearly "seeing" in my mind's eye the cat walking in the back door and "sending" the imagery to him. Sometimes the if the back door is closed and I'm not distracted by computer or something he "calls" me to open the door. Subjectivel…

No, I'm sorry, you got this wrong. When you do that, you are not "calling" the cat, you are effectively controlling it with your mind eye. You need to be very careful with that, doing it long term can result in damage to the cat.

I don't know what to say other than I'm sad when I see reddit-ish comment chains like this on HN. Someday I'll be a big kid and be able to downvote, but in the mean time I shake my head.

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#164

Post by SEJeff »

kamaal wrote: post #156
SiVal wrote: post #124

A VERY timely article for me. About a month ago here in Silicon Valley, I noticed that a crow had been violently torn apart and the pieces scattered all over my backyard lawn. I assume the killer was a raccoon--another improbably intelligent animal. How those fat, little ninjas do what they do is beyond me, but one had apparently caught a crow. A few hours after I noticed the carnage, I grabbed a paper grocery bag an…

>>They went so berserk that I thought for sure they would swoop down and peck at me like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", but they didn't. You got lucky. Here in India, crows get electrified all the time and if you try to clean up a good set of crows will peck on you. And trust me I've been pecked once and it hurts real bad, some times it rough enough to make a person bleed.

Would it be unreasonable to go at them with a cricket bat if they dive bomb you? Not out of aggression, but self defense.

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#165

Post by nommm-nommm »

heartsucker wrote: post #85
krzrak wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize you're not supposed to toss around garbage in the national park?

Biodegradable apple cores that he was feeding to birds? I think that hardly qualifies.

In the very least it's unsightly. Thousands of people go to Yosemite, imagine if every one of them dropped food debris along the trail.

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#167

Post by echelon »

Spooky23 wrote: post #138
SiVal wrote: post #124

A VERY timely article for me. About a month ago here in Silicon Valley, I noticed that a crow had been violently torn apart and the pieces scattered all over my backyard lawn. I assume the killer was a raccoon--another improbably intelligent animal. How those fat, little ninjas do what they do is beyond me, but one had apparently caught a crow. A few hours after I noticed the carnage, I grabbed a paper grocery bag an…

My city has a big flock of them that migrate to another city. Some USDA guys chase them around in a pickup truck when the group gets big and chases them away with strobe lights, lasers, distressed crow sound effects and bottle rockets. When they show up and start settings up, the crows swarm them and poop everywhere. It's pretty crazy.

The USDA deterrent must be crazy to watch. Lasers pointed at crows? Fireworks? I suppose it would be effective, but it sounds wild (and perhaps cruel in the case of fireworks--they're not shooting them at the animals, are they?)

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#168

Post by LyndsySimon »

carapace wrote: post #126
finid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most people don't realize is that most live forms lower on the chain can read our minds. So if the crow's reaction was different based on what you wanted to throw, it's because it knew what you wanted to do before you did it. It was reading your thoughts. Dogs and cats do it too. A few years ago I went to a farm to buy a goat. The younger goats did not know why I was there, but when an older goat saw me and our…

Don't downvote, it's true. Animals can read your thoughts. The mechanism seems to be that they can see your visualizations: I can call my sister's cat in from outside "telepathically" by clearly "seeing" in my mind's eye the cat walking in the back door and "sending" the imagery to him. Sometimes the if the back door is closed and I'm not distracted by computer or something he "calls" me to open the door. Subjectivel…

> Sometimes the if the back door is closed and I'm not distracted by computer or something he "calls" me to open the door. Subjectively, I get this subtle "ping" that feels like "I should open the door for the cat" so I do and he's there waiting.

I've experienced similar things, as I have both small children and a very fat cat that doesn't like to jump over our toddler gate. I've been playing games with headphones on in an entirely separate room and suddenly felt that the cat wanted me to go open the gate. Sure enough, when I got there, he was waiting by the gate.

That said... I don't attribute this to telepathy. Animals get on schedules after a while, and perhaps it's likely that I merely intuited that the cat was very likely to want to go through the gate at that specific time.

It's like that episode of the Office where they put an increasing number of nickels in Dwight's phone handset over a long period, then take them out all at once and he smacks himself in the face with it - we humans often exhibit behaviors that are primarily driven by unconscious stimuli.

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#169

Post by LyndsySimon »

someone7x wrote: post #163
thedoctor79 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm sorry, you got this wrong. When you do that, you are not "calling" the cat, you are effectively controlling it with your mind eye. You need to be very careful with that, doing it long term can result in damage to the cat.

I don't know what to say other than I'm sad when I see reddit-ish comment chains like this on HN. Someday I'll be a big kid and be able to downvote, but in the mean time I shake my head.

I've not seen KenM show up yet, but it's just a matter of time.

Re: When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

#170

Post by Zelmor »

ProfChronos wrote: post #101

Fascinating study. It really triggers questions around how animals' memory work - short term vs long-term, trauma vs joy, etc. I have a 2-year French shepherd (Beauceron) who, while being smart, has a very limited long-term memory. I am almost convinced that he cannot make the difference between waiting for me 5 minutes and 5 hours. At the same time, his trauma or joy memory works incredibly well: he perfectly rememb…

What you are talking about are two different things: memories, and sense of time. Most things aside humans, as much as I'm aware of, live in the here and now. So 5 minutes and 5 hours do not make a difference when waiting for something that is NOT here NOW.

Alas, humans are different. And thus we suffer.

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