Crows Recognize Human Faces
Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.
This NPR story basically confirms what I've always suspected: crows are very smart, and I never should have said those terrible things to that crow a few years back.
I really like crows, and occasionally I'll get a, well, murder of them in my backyard, where they all sit around and caw and cackle to each other, making a huge cacophony that sounds like some large family gatherings I've tried unsuccessfully to avoid. Maybe it's some sort of crow senate. Regardless, they're smart, and they know what you look like.
This NPR story basically confirms what I've always suspected: crows are very smart, and I never should have said those terrible things to that crow a few years back.
I really like crows, and occasionally I'll get a, well, murder of them in my backyard, where they all sit around and caw and cackle to each other, making a huge cacophony that sounds like some large family gatherings I've tried unsuccessfully to avoid. Maybe it's some sort of crow senate. Regardless, they're smart, and they know what you look like.
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There seems to be a lot of collective nouns for crows but I've always like Parliament.
A interesting read about Jackdaw's is this book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Solomon's_Ring_(nonfiction)
Corvids in general are very smart birds. Check this book out:
"Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds" by Bernd Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Raven-Investigations-Adventures-Wolf-Birds/dp/0060930632
Here is a great talk about the intelligence of crows. http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html
I am not surprised at all. Birds are amazingly smart about some things.
I raise ducks, and they know my voice and recognize me. I know this because when I'm out of their line of sight I can say "Hi, Ducks!" and they all begin to quack at me. When I approach their pen, they run to the fence to see if I brought them food.
However, when someone they do not know comes to the fence, they run away. They don't "answer" other people's greetings, either.
"Birdbrain" is a bit of a misnomer, I think. Seems to me that birds can be very, very smart about some things (like crows remembering faces, or my ducks knowing my voice) and not very clever about others (i.e. they still slam into windows while flying, or stand in the middle of the road and forget they can fly out of the way of a moving car).
Those who has watched crows or any members of the corvid family will know - they're are not only superior in intelligence to birds an many nonhuman primates.
Crow senate? Sounds more like a crow jury.
Just what exactly did you say to that crow, anyway?
If the crows are so smart then why didn't they attack the people wearing the Dick Cheney masks?
If you say the wrong thing to one, you might end up eating crow...
There are these crows by my apartment that hate me. When I leave my building, they start cawing at each other and then swoop in by my head.. One actually hit my head once! Yet, when my friends come by, they don't experience it at all. My only thought is that they're attacking me because I have a tattoo of a raven on my leg.
I've seen two crow SUICIDES in the last few months.
These were both purposeful, strategic acts where the crow walked into the middle of a busy artierial and stood completely still, looking into on-coming traffic.
All the while, in both occassions, the crow's partner was cawing like crazy above on the overhead wires-- trying to get the crow to change its mind. Both were VERY aware of the conscious decisions going on here.
The grieving and helpless anguish the other crow displayed after its (likely) mate was crushed by a car a tire was palpable and, honestly, heart-breaking to witness.
Whenever I see those huge gatherings of crows I think of the Neil Gaiman story that was within the Sandman series where the crow explains what those gatherings are. If I remember correctly the story explains it as a sort of crow jury, where different crows sound off about something another crow had done and at the end the accused speaks and then when it's all over they either attack and kill the accused, or they all fly away, seemingly convinced of his innocence or whatever. It's been a long time since I read it. But I always wish I could follow those huge flocks of crows I see from time to time and watch them gather to see if anything remotely similar to that happens.
#i CHURCH.Crows in groups are a Murder or Hover.A Parliament is reserved for ravens,rooks,owls.The other options for ravens-Unkindness,rooks-Clamor.
Counter those somewhat pejorative group names with
an Exaltation of larks,Murmuration of starlings or
my favourite,a Tittering of magpies.Anyone that has witnessed the rising trill of a meadow lark will certainly feel that exaltation is a apt name.
easy to imprint crows by hand rearing, though you really shouldn't. Unlike many others, crows will accept fallen nestlings back and raise them. Be warned though, if you make a family member of a crow it's shit everywhere, anything small to the roof gutters and the depressing sight of a crow looking up at a calling flock unsure.
A startlingly true and overlooked corrollary that applies to nearly every animal, "X Recognize human feces." Unverified, but that's never stopped it being less true.
The corvidaes are awesome, so this doesn't surprise me in the least.
My grandmother had a pet crow for a bit. It did not shit everywhere, it was paper trained. Over all it was one of the friendlier more intelligent pet birds I've ever encountered. Very quiet and social, could speak a bit. You could let it out in the back yard and it'd come back at night, or fly around and hang out while you did yard work. G-ma did eventually let him go out in the woods as he had started to get rather depressed.
They all look the same to me.
Crows Recognize Human Faces
Is that supposed to be surprising?
Any reason why they would not recognise human faces?
I had a pet crow when I was in high school, or maybe it thought it had me. It would stand on my head if it thought that guests were getting too much attention. It would drag the cats across tile floors if it saw them eating cat food which it thought was crow food. Cats would eat outside, the crow dined indoors. If it really wanted our attention it would fly around inside the grand piano.
When I went away to college it left after a couple months.
Smart...and maybe old, too: crows live a long time, seventy years being stated as recorded (for captive birds? banded wild birds caught and released? I don't know...): but no-one really knows how old they could get, or get, in the wild.
When it's hot, though, it is known that they like ice cream:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU
I'm sure if the pigeon can pass the mirror test, crows can. Funny thing is, gorillas and some breeds of dog cannot.
@13 WIZARDOFPLUM
You may be right, but "Parliment of Crows" is referenced in the WikiP link, and IIRC it's the name of the Gaiman story that IGPAJO referenced.
That aside, the buggers can make fists! And hit you with them!
One cacophonous summer I took to chucking dirt clods and spraying water at them whenever they were holding council in my trees. It only took about 3 good havings at them before they learned to go elsewhere (to the sound of much resentful cawing as they flew away) the moment I showed my face.
I once mocked some crows that were angry at my cat by cawing at them. For months afterwards, crows within a block of my house would dive for my head whenever I was outside. I have learned my lesson, I am now polite to crows.
take a black garbage bag and kick it around under a tree full of crows.
oh. and crows learn what the sight of a gun is after one time.
A murder of crows convened above my alley in Washington, D.C., after the last day of hunting season in Virginia. A friend of mine had brought me a brace of pheasant, which is was dressing on the back porch. At a minimum, I hope that they were only smart enough to know that there was fresh meat about. I was worried that they were smarter than that and collecting other information.
DLD
Washington, DC
A large number of crows have decided that the Penn State campus is a good place to winter.
The campus physical plant staff started scaring them away with fireworks, but now they recognize the physical plant vehicles and can differentiate them from other cars (including similar vehicles like the intra-campus mail truck). They take off when the guys with fireworks drive up and return seconds after they drive away.
There is a tradition here (India) to give some rice to the crows. In our previous house we took this to an extreme, and would feed thirty to fifty crows every day. Most people would feed crows early in the day, but we used to feed them in the late afternoon. They were very used to the timing, and would line up on adjacent houses waiting for us.
Damn it! I live in Kolkata and those rat bastard birds are everywhere!
@FINE WATCHES
Are you saying you got replica watches?
Those gatherings where they hang out all together and make a lot of noise? Sometimes that's a roost: they all meet up at the end of the day - about an hour before sundown, and maybe a mile or two from where they'll eventually roost for the night - for lots of playing, sounding off, bickering, sharing news, or whatever it is they're doing...nobody's exactly sure. Whatever it is, it's definitely highly social. And roosts can be up to tens of thousands of crows or more, which is all kinds of amazing. Then when it's time to fly off to wherever they're actually sleeping, just before sunset or so, they quiet down and leave en masse.
You can try finding a roost just by watching for crows in the sky an hour or two before the sun starts to go down, and following them if you can.
They really are amazing animals, I just wish they had better singing voices and didn't eat baby songbirds.
For a few months now I constantly run into small groups of crows wherever I go. I'm starting to wonder if it's an omen of some sort.
That being said, a friend of mine many years ago climbed up to a crow's nest, snatched an egg, incubated it and then raised the hatchling. That bird was very smart, but had two bad habits. It loved to shred money if it was left sitting out in the open and also would perch on a friend's shoulder and snap a cigarette from said friend's pocket, fly off with it and merrily shred it. Pretty neat bird.
There is a whole section of Kiki's Delivery Service that revolves around this...
Those end-of-the-day roosts you refer to, lots of birds do that. I call them "party trees" where the parrots (we have wild flocks in LA) gather and yak for an hour before sunset. I imagine they compare notes on where they flew today, what they ate, who's doing who, etc. You can hear them blocks away, and see the droppings under the designated tree. I enjoy watching them, but I've seen neighbors cut down trees so the birds have to choose another place to congregate.
I suddenly realise that I suffer a serious disability:
I am unable to recognise crow faces
@23 CHURCH:
The Gaiman story is "A Parliament of Rooks".
There is a saying spanish:
"Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos"
Translation: raise crows and they will peck your eyes out.
It mostly refers to reaping what you sow, but when I started reading posts about people having crows as pets I was instantly concerned for their eyeballs o_O