351–360 of 443 posts
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You could have just asked, but I don't think it's particularly important information.
I don't actually care, I just wanted to point it out to you, so that you understand how strongly it's colouring your views. We all have our biases, and we should all be aware of them.
Previously I heard about crows in Japan leaving nuts on the way of the cars to crash them when traffic lights are red and collecting them the next cycle. This summer I witnessed the exact same thing when I was driving through a particularly jammy traffic light here in Europe. Are these crows inventing the method over and over again independently, like scientists finding the same thing at the same time in different pa…
When I was a child, I'd spend a lot of time at my grandfathers farm, and one summer he took in an injured crow that hurt its wing. For some strange reason, he named all of his animals Jack, cats, dogs and now crows. So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. It would ar…
Inverse story: my dad sprayed water at a crow on his lawn, the crow then took to perching on the clogged gutter above the front door and kicking water at anyone who walked under.
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I was in Nepal having breakfast. Some crows are sitting there watching me eat. I look down to read my book, and in not more than a few seconds, I hear the clinking of dishes. I look up and the crows are flying off with my toast and jam. It was right in front of me, but they were quick enough to get in and out before I could react. I realized that they are probably aware of my lack of attention to my food and that the…
I sat and watched a raven (majestic and BIG, if you've never seen one) at Yellowstone Park for a few minutes. It was a big parking lot outside the gift shop, and some visitor had parked his motorcycle there. Pannier bags on the back. The raven was sitting on one bag, actively working the zipper open. About a foot of zipper. Which is pretty impressive, but the more impressive thing was how . It would worry it for a co…
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> flock of crows This is called a murder of crows. I've always found that term odd, and it seems derogatory. I don't know the origin.
and multiple ravens are referred to as a "conspiracy" whereas a group of owls is a "parliament" and gather several vultures and you get a "venue" I recently heard this used in a podcast and I got distracted by the term and looked up all this nonsense. TIL multiple jellyfish are a "smack"!
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That's a wonderful story. My only New Year's resolution this year was to befriend a crow. So far, no progress. Maybe next year.
You'd probably need to start with a lone crow. As a group they can be quite nefarious and clever about it. I once slowed down a group of crows from killing and eating an injured bird; once they boldly got past my interference, they formed a sub-group and that sub-group followed me all the way home (1/2 mile) hopping from tree to tree, cawing the whole way.
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Pigeons do the exact same though, I never slow down for them because I know they always fly out of the way just in time, even when it looks like you're about to roll over them.
Well, you should. Pigeons can have an illness or fights that make them loose some toes and because of this, they can walk slowly or not react as fast as the others. One day I saw one on the street while a truck was comming fast towards it. I heard pretty clear a "plop" sound, like the sound of a bag exploding. I just hear it because I didn't want to look at it. It's not the kind of image you want to remember.
Anyhow, a week or two later, I heard all the crows in the back and heard a loud 'bang'. I thought the neighbour had grabbed a shotgun and shot a crow, so I went out back to investigate. After looking around I saw that a crow laid dead next to a power transformer up on a telephone pole.
At first there was one other crow cawing loudly. Then more and more crows showed up. They took turns flying up and pecking at the dead crow. Within an hour, there was probably 100 crows, in all the trees, powerlines and on apartment buildings nearby. It really impressed on me how social crows were, obviously the 'caw'ing was such that it called all the crows, and crows much have told other crows as well. You could almost say they were mourning the crow or perhaps learning how this one crow died.
It would be really interesting examining the communication patterns of crows, they have such control over their voice, they must be able to do some complex communication.
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I don't actually care, I just wanted to point it out to you, so that you understand how strongly it's colouring your views. We all have our biases, and we should all be aware of them.
Pardon him, Theodotus, he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. -- George Bernard Shaw
It's fascinating that intelligence exists in different clades & phylum of animals: crows, octopus, apes etc. It suggests intelligence is not very progressive, in evolution. It advances & recedes, and evolution can find multiple paths to it from various starting point. It doesn't take a mammalian brain. Who know what other animal intelligence exists today, or in the past. The current crop of species (us excepted) may…
A wild untrained human animal isn't that bright. We can probably operate above the crow level, but maybe not by much. What makes us special is persistent collective learning and abstract communication. Unlike animals, generations of humans don't have to keep re-solving the same problems. As a species we have cumulative persistent memory for techniques and abstractions. That's the real game changer. But it took a surp…
We also don't have to spend 80-90% of our time in a struggle for survival against the elements during this crucial learning period.
Humans in developed countries are typically provided for, while doing the majority of their learning.