Thanks for the lead in to what is possibly my most favouritest fun fact ever =)
Crows are not alone in their shocking avian intelligence. The whole Corvidae family is eerily smart. And a bit odd.
People throughout history have picked up on this, leading to them having the BEST group names in the animal kingdom. A Parliament of Rooks. An Unkindness (Or Conspiracy) of Ravens. And of course, A Murder of crows.
Each breed has it’s own quirks, and their intelligence takes different specific forms.
There’s Magpie’s, who will collect shiny things. Often specifically stealing things they know other creatures want (Car keys, Jewelry), leading to nests that are veritable treasure troves.
Crows are not just capable of using tools, they will Make them. And are among the smartest creatures on the planet. Right up there with Primates and Dolphins.
And my personal favourite. The utterly entrancing Rook. We don’t have them in North America, but they are very common in Europe and Asia. They are just as smart as crows, but slightly smaller. They exhibit the same tool usage and making, and even abstract reasoning.
Get this… Scientists like to observe them a lot, to study how smart they are, so they construct strange situations where food is out of reach, but detectable. In this one test, they put a worm in a tube of water, on top of which it floated. The rook couldn’t reach the worm of course, and they figured it might make a tool to reach. It did, sort of… It picked up rocks, and one by one tossed them into the tube. Raising the water level, and the worm, until it was within reach O_o.
It understood Water Displacement. A bird that CAN’T SWIM, and can’t really directly interact with water other than to drink it, somehow understood Water Displacement!
The only reasonable explanations seem to be either A) It observed people doing similar things, and extrapolated that knowledge and applied it to it’s situation. Or B) … It had been dropping pebbles into liquid before, just to see what happened, and figured it out on its own.
That’s literally science. A damn bird was capable of scientific reasoning. I know tons of Humans that aren’t capable of that. That bird is smarter than possibly the Majority of humans. Or at least a significant Minority.
But that’s not why I’m such a fan. No. I’m a fan because they exhibit what might possibly be the strangest, most unexplained behavior I’ve ever heard of by Anything.
Now, I do have to say this should be taken with a grain of salt, as it’s pretty fantastic, and hasn’t to my knowledge been recorded or observed in good conditions, but there Have been a number of independent reports of people seeing it happen… There, disclaimer over.
It’s well established that Corvidae commit murder. This part is well verified. Various members of the species will occasionally assault and kill each other for reasons no one can explain. We assume there’s some kind of social reason, since they develop pet names for each other, language, have long memories and harbor grudges, we assume they can also hate. Enough to kill each other.
It could also parenthetically be noted that while some people might claim “Animals don’t go to war”, or murder, etc, etc. That’s demonstrably untrue. Stupid animals don’t go to war. Intelligent ones do all the time. Apes, Dolphins, and presumably Crows.
But… That still leaves out the strange phenomenon of the Parliament, or as it was first called, the Storytelling.
Sometimes, very rarely. A gathering of Rooks will occur, as they often do. Except on these rare evenings, always late at night, they gather around one individual. That individual stands in the center of a ring of it’s brethren, and talks. Or rather, chirps and squawks. At length. With emphasis, repetition, movement… Drama.
And then, after some length of time, it stops. And the circle stands silent for a moment. Then at some unseen signal, one of two things happens. Either they all fly away, followed soon after by the bird in the middle. Or…
They Attack, and mercilessly rip it apart.
There’s a number of ideas on why this might happen. Perhaps it’s a Trial. After all, they can murder, they can resent. Maybe they can have a sense of justice? Maybe they punish those who harm the flock somehow?
I don’t really know. But I do know that the crows where I went to college enjoyed terrifying people. I’m dead serious. There was a stand of huge trees north of campus. Trees that at dusk in the spring and fall, would FILL with crows. I mean FILL. Thousands of them. Maybe even tens of thousands. Nearly every night. I have no idea why they liked those trees so much.
But for whatever reason they did. And they would take laps in small groups. As if they were on patrol or something. Twenty or so at a time. They’d loop around for a few minutes, then settle, and another group would take their place.
And if you were walking alone to your car, just before dark, that group would come to say hi. They’d fly down and land. All around you. And sort of hop along, sneaking up on you from behind. Whichever bird you turned away from, it would sneak closer. Until you had this ring of birds circling tight around you. And then all at once they’d explode into the air in this huge rush of beating wings, and head back to the tree cawing their asses off.
God help the poor bastard I saw throw a rock at them.
There was this silence for like… probably 3 seconds, but it felt like longer. Then the group near him screeched, awful shrill caws. And took off… And so did like, every other damn crow within ear shot. Thousands of them.
The guys face just went white, and he bolted for his car. He made it fine, it wasn’t far. But a bunch of them landed. Scratched it all to hell. Pecked at the roof. Then got bored and all took a big shit on it.
(Some of you who have read a great deal might be now thinking about the Parliament of rooks, “Hold up, that’s from a book. It’s fiction” , Yes, it is, Neil Gaiman. But while someone Might have made it up, it wasn’t him. He got it from stories he heard when he was younger, and there are a number of written accounts going back for some time of people claiming to have seen this. It’s entirely possible that this is just a good story that has been repeated over the years. And gained more notoriety since it’s publication by a best selling author. But the fact does remain that Corvidae Do murder each other. Often in groups. That much we know, and has often been observed and even recorded. They do gather in these social circles for unexplained and unknown purposes. So really, the only thing in doubt is the strange organization. Which they have proven very capable of. The only real question is, does it happen exactly like this… And well. The damn things are smart enough to figure out the rudiments of science. People had laws WAY before they had science. So it seems a perfectly reasonable leap to me)
*** PS - Edit *** I wrote this around 1am Thursday night (which I will blame for it’s incoherence), but didn’t post it. Figuring I’d schedule it for the weekend since I didn’t have a new image to go up.
Friday morning there were four crows lined up on my fence staring at me. They didn’t even fly away when I walked past them. They just turned their heads and watched me, making quiet little caw’s to each other. I haven’t seen a crow in months. I thought they had fled for somewhere less drought stricken. I think the meaning is clear… The crows have learned to hack my tumblr account O_o They know I’m on to them!
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dailybridgerton
