One time a raven of all things fell down my chimney and was perched on a ledge interior to the chimney above the fireplace. I got a call about it early in the day asking me to come home and deal with it, but I couldn't get away, so I said I'd deal with it when I got home.
It spent the next several hours trying fruitlessly to fly back up the chimney. Its wings were too large to spread, so it only got about half way up before slowly sliding back down. When it wasn't trying to escape, it was making scary pissed-off raven noises.
I ended up having to lay down face up in the fireplace and reach up with gloves (and my arms wrapped in towels) to grab the bird, get up, and walk it outside. It was mortified and tried to fly away before I got to the door, but was disoriented and flew into a wall instead. I think it was too stunned to resist at that point, and so I picked it up and brought it outside. After a few moments it flew up into the Japanese maple in my front yard.
There were some crows in this same tree that observed the whole escapade and decided to start caw-caw-cawing at me. And then for the next month they kept doing it. Turns out that yelling at them that I had saved one of them and that it was my tree anyway didn't actually succeed in shutting them up.
It's an irrational reaction to a traumatic situation. Although we theoretically have better tools to reason with, humans sometimes react in the same way to these situations. Ambulance crews and emergency workers in general could probably fill books with these events.
Probably, from the ravens' point of view what actually happened was that your chimney trapped their buddy. And the tree was theirs too, part of the nature. :D
I had a breeding pair of peregrine falcons living over my porch and there are also many crows that live nearby. One day the falcons had caught and partially eaten a crow who managed to escape the nest and make it to the ground. Every single crow within at least a mile radius (probably close to a hundred) showed up and some of them tried to fight with the falcons. They were loud and quite agitated for a couple of hours. For the rest of the time while the falcons were nesting I stopped feeding the crows peanuts because they steered clear of the area, as soon as the falcons left they showed up again.
I once watched a murder of crows chase down a falcon. I never knew they could fly so aerobatically. They were flying faster than I'd ever seen a crow fly, and maneuvering in ways that I didn't think possible.
Now, when ever I hear crows going absolutely mad, I assume a bird of prey is near by, and almost aways, if you go out and look, you'll see the predator nearby.
Falcons and hawks tend to get out of Dodge really fast when 3-4 crows set their sights on them. They are out for an easy meal, and when confronted with opposition, they do their best to find a new location.
My beagle pays close attention to crows around my home. If a fox is making his rounds, the crows start yelling, and my beagle starts looking out for the fox. (And me too)
Is there an animal that does not fear death? I mean, try to swat a fly. Bees will swarm and attack if one of their swarm is killed or injured--it releases a pheromone. Or look at how a dog or cat responds and develops under abuse. They know what a threat is, and avoid it, which implies an aversion to death.
I'm continuously surprised at what researchers are surprised by, when it comes to animal behavior. Once it became obvious that we are ourselves animals, the default hypothesis should be that everything we experience, other animals experience as well; that we are indicative examples of a consistent set. Then we could look for differences.
Instead, the presumption is that animals experience none of the inner life that we do. IMO this goes back to religious and cultural beliefs from Europe, not from any scientific basis. Other cultures don't think this way. If you told a Native American or Tibetan Buddhist that crows are aware of death and perceive their surroundings, they would probably say "yes, of course."
That was my first reaction too, but I've come around since reading the article. What you're talking about is self-preservation, and of course animals display that all the time.
This study shows that crows behaved differently when seeing an already dead crow, and they feared whatever person/animal was near the dead crow.
Agreed. What the researchers showed is that crows seem to have a recognition of death. That is distinct from having a self-preservation instinct.
If you find yourself surprised by what scientists are surprised by, perhaps the fault is more likely to be with your own understanding of what the scientists are actually doing.
They're tecognising an implied rather than imminent threat. Pretty much any animal will react to protect itself from a clear threat, but what these animals are doing is associating the death of one of their kind with something linked to it, but which itself on its own does not appear threatening or dangerous. They're making a cognitive leap most animals can't make.
Agree. While crows are exceptionally smart, I bet if other species are studied, similar results will be found, with regards to understanding the concept of death.
The one that gets me now is when people say something like "well I don't eat beef, but I am ok with eating fish because they are lower on the food chain." As if fish don't feel pain when they are killed. You either accept that what you are eating had to suffer when it died, and feel appropriate guilt (or not), or you don't eat any meat at all.
> You either accept that what you are eating had to suffer when it died, and feel appropriate guilt (or not), or you don't eat any meat at all.
Even if you only eat grains, you are responsible/guilty for mice being run over in the farming process, and then poisoned to defend storage of your grains.
I don't see it as a binary decision, but as a spectrum. You can try to optimise for the least damage to sentient beings, but there's no way to get it 100% right.
(I agree about fish though, nothing special about them that separates them from land animals.)
It seems that much of studying animal behavior consists of confirming what farmers and hunters have known since 3000BC.
I think chipmunks in my yard aren't much different than these crows, though they clearly can't recognize faces. Actually they don't really understand that legs and arms are part of the same being. Which makes me wonder about crows, which seem so smart but don't have much more brain mass than a squirrel.
> don't have much more brain mass than a squirrel.
Mass alone isn't a significant measure. It's the mass to size ratio[1], which for crows (EQ 4.1) is similar to chimps (EQ 4.2), with higher EQ generally denoting higher intelligence. For comparison, bottle nose dolphins are 5.9 EQ.
Yeah, true, otherwise whales would have fusion-powered underwater cities. I think in the case of crows they have really good eyes especially compared to chipmunks, who don't seem able to resolve anything other than movement beyond a few feet.
> otherwise whales would have fusion-powered underwater cities.
No, no, no. Why do you have to assume that intelligent beings must always develop complex technology. If you define "intelligent" to be "like us", you will fail to see the intelligence of almost everything else.
Our own species learned to develop complex technology because we had (at least) 2 different exceptional qualities: an smart enough brain, and hands with thumbs that are good enough to manipulate objects. Each of this is independently useful (or it would not have evolved at all), but we got lucky an won the lottery twice... and then we were able to combine those two features in non obvious ways.
And it took us hundreds of thousands of years to figure out how.
> ...because we had (at least) 2 different exceptional qualities...
On the topic of exceptional qualities, what is thought to be behind New Caledonian Crows and their expert tool use & building is their eyes are more rotated to the front of their face than other crows. Thus, they can focus their vision in front of them easier than other crows of similar intelligence and makes it easier to manipulate and use objects.
I think there's been other crows that have used primitive tools in lab settings, but nowhere close to what New Caledonian ones do in the wild or in the lab.
As you point out in your example, many intelligent species have been observed using rudimentary tools. The conventional explanation is that we must be so much more smart than them, since our tools are much more complex.
My point is that maybe what they lack is not the raw intelligence to envision the use of tools, but the dexterity to apply that intelligence to the task of complex tool making.
> My point is that maybe what they lack is not the raw intelligence to envision the use of tools, but the dexterity to apply that intelligence to the task of complex tool making.
Sounds plausible to me. The more difficult question is how does one ever prove that it's true? I agree that it could be, just overcoming the difficulty in testing with species we barely understand/communicate with hasn't caught up yet to our curiosity.
Yep, crows have pretty good eyesight. Speaking of chipmunks, I used to have one shamelessly come to the window where I would put some peanuts out every day for jays and chickadees. This particular chipmunk just couldn't help himself and tapping on the window wouldn't stop him from stuffing his cheeks (he'd just look at me for a moment and then carry on with stuffing). I would have to literally open the window to get him to run off and save some for everyone else. However, as soon as I look away (my PC at home is next to the window), he'd be back stuffing his cheeks again. Perhaps it just couldn't see me that well, as you said, heh.
Crows will craft and use tools in the wild[1]. Their intelligence always surprises me, though I think most of us are predisposed to assume birds are not that intelligent when compared to other animals. I used to think that myself before making the study of birds a hobby.
Crows snip into the leaf edges and then tear out neat strips of vegetation with which they can probe insect-harboring crevices. These tools have been observed to come in three types: narrow strips, wide strips and multi-stepped strips—which are wide at one end and, via a manufacturing process that involves stepwise snips and tears, become narrow at the opposite end.
Studies show that New Caledonian crows are capable of meta-tool use, at a level rivalling the best performances seen in primates.
One such study involved putting food in a box out of the crows' reach. The crows were given a stick that was too short to reach the food. However, this short stick could be used to retrieve a longer stick from another box, which could then be used to retrieve the food. This complex behaviour involved the crow realising that a tool could be used on non-food objects, and suppressing the urge to go directly for the food. It was solved by six of seven birds on the first attempt. This behaviour had previously only been observed in primates.
Recently, I noticed a juvenile crow that had been hit by a car in San Francisco, it was limping and unable to fly.
There were two crows near by that kept an eye on it. When I grabbed the injured crow and took it to my car [1] to deliver to a wildlife hospital [2], the two crows followed me to my car and called out. It was really intense. I felt bad for taking the crow away, but had hoped that I would be able to help it.
Ultimately the crows injuries were too bad to care for and the wildlife center [1] had to put it to sleep :(
It was pretty amazing to see the crows' behavior. They really seemed upset/concerned when I collected the injured juvenile, it seemed like sincere empathy which is something that's amazing to observe in non-humans. Heck, it's amazing to observe in humans :P
If you're in the bay area and find injured wildlife, please get in touch with the Lindsay.
Crows went into my mechanics shop, got up on a toolbox and stole a recently opened bag of in-shell sunflower seeds, without being seen, and had a sunflower seed-opening party in the back parking lot. (I arrived to pick up a vehicle to find the bag of nuts on the ground next to it and hundreds of empty shells all over the area, and the service writer laughing at finding someone's snack being snacked on elsewhere.)
Whether that implies some crows are smart or I should find another mechanic, is debatable.
It's breeding season for magpies here (Australia) at the moment. So you're likely to get swooped expectantly. Recent studies have shown they recognise specific people they consider a threat and will swoop them year after year.
I remember as a kid watching our cat running from the shed up the back across the yard to the house. He was hunkered down, going like a bullet as a magpie dive-bombed him three times.
Whilst on the bus earlier this week I was waiting for it to depart when I heard a loud thud on the roof. Shortly afterwards I heard another thud. It turned out that a crow had a large seed in its mouth, seemed to be a plum seed, and was dive-bombing the roof of the bus in an attempt to crack it. It succeeded on the third attempt.
The difference, though, is there was no punishment. To make the cartoon match the article, instead of spraying the monkeys, there would just be a dead monkey near the bananas. Then the dead monkey is removed, and the others still know to fear the bananas.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take anything from the lady with the creepy mask holding a dead crow, either. Might make a good album cover for the right kind of band, though.
It spent the next several hours trying fruitlessly to fly back up the chimney. Its wings were too large to spread, so it only got about half way up before slowly sliding back down. When it wasn't trying to escape, it was making scary pissed-off raven noises.
I ended up having to lay down face up in the fireplace and reach up with gloves (and my arms wrapped in towels) to grab the bird, get up, and walk it outside. It was mortified and tried to fly away before I got to the door, but was disoriented and flew into a wall instead. I think it was too stunned to resist at that point, and so I picked it up and brought it outside. After a few moments it flew up into the Japanese maple in my front yard.
There were some crows in this same tree that observed the whole escapade and decided to start caw-caw-cawing at me. And then for the next month they kept doing it. Turns out that yelling at them that I had saved one of them and that it was my tree anyway didn't actually succeed in shutting them up.