Crows perceive death
Crows are very smart birds, although they’ve long been thought to be harbingers of bad news:
A crow’s brain is the size of a human thumb, huge relative to its body, putting their intelligence on par with primates and allowing them to solve complex problems. The PBS series “Nature” showed an experiment where a crow figured out how to use a small stick to retrieve a larger stick and then use that to retrieve a piece of food that was well out of reach.
Marzluff and his team conduct research with masks, wearing them on campus and recording what kind of sounds the crows make. They discovered crows recognize and remember individual faces. By sedating the birds and putting them through a PET scan, they found different areas of a crow’s brain light up when they see a person they perceive as friendly or threatening.
“They recognize individual people that are important to them and when somebody does something dangerous, they mark that person, remember that person, as far as I can tell, for their life,” Marzluff said.
Now researchers have learned something else about the brains of crows:
Using masks that look creepily human, researchers showed up at Seattle parks carrying a stuffed crow.
They recorded the reactions. It takes one crow to signal an alarm, and then dozens show up. They all surround the dead crow, looking at it as they perch on trees or fly above it, a behavior called mobbing.
‘Crows have evolved to have these complex social relationships, and they have a big brain,’ said Kaeli Swift, a University of Washington graduate student who led the study.
How big of a brain? Crows are on par with smart mammals, like dolphins and primates, in brain-to-body proportion…
In another part of the experiment, using slightly radioactive tracers, researchers measured the brain activity of crows after they were shown a dead bird.
The scans showed the section of the hippocampus ”” the part involved in memory formation ”” light up at the sight of death.
‘In that particular situation at least, that crow was learning about a place, or a face, or a situation and associated it with that dead crow,’ said John Marzluff, the lead researcher.
It’s not at all clear that crows have any concept of death even remotely akin to that of humans. But they certainly seem to notice and remember something about death—as they notice and remember a tremendous number of other things.
Does this change your attitude towards crows?
Maybe. My daughter with the over-sized heart took in a waif-like young woman who needed a home. She brought her crow, and stayed for three years.
Crows may be smart, but in my opinion they make terrible house mates. The waif did love him, or her, and gave it the name Cyrus.
From Debbie, courtesy of her Mom’s WW II cookbook:
Crow and Mushroom Stew
3 crows
1 Tbsp lard/shortening
1 pint stock or gravy
2 Tbsp cream
1/2 cup mushrooms
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper
Clean and cut crows into small portions and let them cook a short time in the lard/shortening in a saucepan, being careful not to brown them.
Next, add to the contents of the pan, the stock or gravy, and salt, pepper and cayenne to taste.
Simmer 1 hour, or until tender, add mushrooms, simmer 10 minutes more and then stir in cream.
Arrange the mushrooms around the crows on a hot platter.
Really Debbie? I was looking for the punch line–I thought it would be like the recipe for “planking shad”. You do an elaborate preparation, then throw away the fish and eat the plank.
Don’t think I have ever been quite that hungry. There must be a rationale for the saying “eat crow” as a penance.
Plucking a live crow.
Clever bird!
The gardeners around here kill a crow and hang it upside down in their garden to scare off the other crows.
Ok, crows recognize death. Do they then register the dead crow to vote Democrat?
Out here in western Nevada, we had our local assemblyman to lunch last week with a discussion group I sometimes frequent. Among other things, he pointed out that it is illegal to kill ravens in Nevada. So if you see a large black bird that is alive, it’s a raven. If that same large black bird is dead, it’s a crow.
Well, I just don’t count crows…
As we don’t see any around here.
“Does this change your attitude towards crows?”
Yes. It gives credence to the sci-fi specualtion that some aliens may be birdlike. Big Bird! may in fact exist…
Nope, I’ve had a deep respect for crows a long time now. Tried to nurse a wing-broke crow back to health for the better part of near three months on the Eastern Shore of Md. in the late ’70s and learned how smart that determinedly irascible bird was just watching and living with him. Then read Bernd Heinrich’s Ravens in Winter some years later, which more or less confirmed my casual observations. Heinrich has since written additional books on the ravens and other corvids’ brains.
So a “murder of crows” isn’t that much of a stretch, is it…?
‘Does this change your attitude towards crows?’
No.
Having seen Hitchcock’s The Birds, I will respectfully give crows their space.
Serendipity—just a few hours ago I found myself in a conversation wherein I informed my companion that crows are some of the smartest birds. Smarter than owls.
No change in my opinion. I respect crows.
Took care of a crow pup several years ago, almost flight-ready. It learned to take food from me quickly, and I handed it off to a crow specialist after two weeks. She said young crows need to be taught by their elders how to forage (e.g, how to turn over rocks and sticks to look for bugs beneath), what to eat. Said it takes months because of seasonal changes. She was going to teach all that to my bird.
There is a crow language, along the lines of “caw, caw” is an alarm, but one or three caws are not. I forget the details, sorry.
Crows are always interesting, but then again almost everything interests me and i used to try to always learn about. (as an adult, i mostly work)
Near where i used to live there was a nesting site. every nite, a huge number of birds would slowly collect aa dusk appeared. i had always regretted not taking a picture, though this was before when cell phones just called out and thats pretty much it.
what made people wonder. was why they chose this stand of trees out of all of upstate ny and over a jehova witness kingdom hall.
with first light they all commuted to wherever around the area they were going to go. they often call each other for eats, so that group must of covered a huge area in terms of carrion.
From the article:
Hmmmm. After the live crow had been caught, sedated, transported to a strange place, injected with “radioactive tracer” and had a dead crow shoved in its face, the researchers then subjected it to some kind of scanning process and noted that the memory-forming portion of the crow’s brain had become very active. From this they concluded that a) the activity had been sparked by “the sight of death,” and b) associations with “that dead crow” were recorded in the live crow’s brain.
It seems to me there are a lot of factors that need to be carefully controlled here before they can conclude anything. And I have no idea how they’d show what was recorded by the activity in the hippocampus — but they’re leaving themselves a wide berth, including information “about a place, or a face, or a situation.”
Sounds to me like a good candidate experiment replication.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026
All I know is that the leading GOP candidate has been crowing non-stop, and even if he is a bird-brain, it must be crow because he’s certainly outsmarted us all.
I live in Sabine National Forest in Texas and the other day witnessed a flock of crows that literally ran off a bald eagle. Also have seen flocks of crows do the same with other much larger birds you would think could hold their ground.
Thing is the crows work in concert to run the others out of their territory.
The Daily Mail article is noteworthy for its photos, but for its text not so much. The disciplines of the “researchers” are not identified. Many scientists are pseudo- at best. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were (ugh) self-styled “neuro-psychologists”.
Think about it: how do they know what lit up is the hippocampus of the crow? PET scans show where administered radioactivity is concentrated, and need anatomic correlates for interpretation. Why combined PET/CT scanners exist. MRIs would be anatomically better, but they are noisy and most of us can’t put earplugs on birds.
But what the hey. Maybe the proper imaging was done and the journalists are too hypoeducated to explain.
When I was younger I used to go crow hunting. You’re able to use electronic callers for crows and I used a cassette recording titled “Death of a Crow.” It was hideous sounding, but very effective in attracting the local crows.
Back when I was in the USCG, I was stationed on a tiny windswept island in the Aleutians. We didn’t have a station dog, we had a pack of station dogs, one of which was a young Lab. When anyone drove up, these dogs would take off up the road and chase the vehicle for a good quarter mile. One day the Lab fell under the wheel of a truck and got its leg broken. We took it to a vet and he put a cast on. Two days later the Lab, complete with hobbled leg, was out chasing trucks again. Crows are definitely smarter than Labrador Retrievers.
“Does this change your attitude towards crows? ”
No. They have always been difficult to kill. I doubt that having this knowledge will make it any easier for me.
All animals are smarter than we think. We just do not know how much smarter.
I’ve always liked crows, Neo. They have interesting personalities. They are very long-lived and I swear they do recognize individuals. We have quite a few in the vast woods behind our house. And, Jack, I too have seen crows run off a bald eagle. Very dramatic. I was biking and came upon a road kill with three crows surrounding it. The eagle swooped majestically down across a field and fence to land on the road. The crows didn’t flinch, but turned toward the eagle and raised a caw cawing ruckus. The eagle promptly decamped, its dignity affronted (at least that was my assumption).
I was rather lost in the wilderness in Kings Canyon Nat.Pk. on a solo backpack trip 5 yrs. ago. Unexpected torrential monsoons forced me to deviate my route to cut it short. I was walking in clouds that were as thick as pea-soup fog. Rain run -off had created ruts that looked like they could be the trail but led to precipitous drop offs. Out of nowhere a crow landed in a tree near me squalking his head off. He then flew on about 200 yards to another tree. I followed as this route led me along a seeming trail not being able to see more than 5 ft. Ahead. This continued for another 30 minutes or so. Him flying tree to tree, squalking, me following, until the clouds/fog lifted. Native Americans have always revered the crow and I have always attributed that experience to having met a spirit guide. Intelligent, yes…and knowing
Our junior high librarian had a crow in a large cage in her backyard. The crow could talk, like a parrot. The first time I heard it I was robbing her plum trees when a voice called out “what are you doing over there.” We ran. On later visits we learned that it was the crow doing the talking.
Many years later I watched 3 crows press a coordinated attack against a mockingbird nest. Two crows ran interference and distracted the parents while the third robbed the nest of 3 chicks from the rear.
When I was outside to smoke. I used the watch the crows foraging. It was entertaining and it reminded me of their relationship to T. rex.
i had several long-time pets crows as a child in kentucky and believe all this and more… much more.
every now and then my crow would fly off on an adventure and return later in the day
i only knew where to once
he flew up to a local elementary school, landed on the window sill and sat there saying ‘hello’ to the children
several of them knew him and brought him home
there are lots of stories
i should add…
now i live in alaska
ravens are like crows on ‘steroids’
there is a reason ravens are a significant part of alaskan native culture-myths-creation stories-art
and if you ever stood outside in the winter alone with a raven in a near by tree-top you would realize that they are not really birds
I walked to work often in the late ’90’s (not bragging: it was about a 200 yard “hike” is all …I even walked in the rain, it was so close).
One early morning, I noticed some crows making all sort of racket in and under a couple of the several oak trees outside our office complex.
I looked around, and spotted a very juvenile crow had apparently fallen from the nest (far above); it was too young to fly, and was huddled back against the roots.
There were feral cats in the area, so I thought it best to place it as high as I could in a nook of the tree it was cowering under.
(I’d raised a couple of cockatiels – pets – from hatchlings over the years, so I’m definitely a “bird person” lol.)
…and walked on to the office (another 150 feet at most).
But not before noticing the flock was not, umm, “impressed” by my well-intentioned act. Quite annoyed, apparently.
…and for the next two years (really, for as long as I was employed there), those crows would harass me – no other way to describe it – most of the way on my walk to work, and the walk back home.
I did a lot of recreational cycling that started and ended nearby too, and they’d often follow us for a ways (never more than a few hundreds of yards).
There was also a Safeway (market) a few blocks away, and occasionally they’d spot me there, too.
The attention could be both annoying and kind of amusing; it was always interesting.
My major take-away was that crows really don’t soon forget a human face.
And they can quite adequately communicate their displeasure to other & newer flock members thank you very much.
A few years later, long after we’d moved, I happened by there, and was …finally …completely ignored.