You may have heard that an elephant never forgets, but did you know that adage may be more descriptive of crows? As dark as they may seem (they do flock in "murders," after all!), crows are incredibly complex, intelligent creatures. They are also highly social and have coexisted with human beings for millennia.
I spoke with Dr. John Marzluff, professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington, to learn more about these fascinating creatures. He wrote three popular science books about their incredible brains and behavior, and I learned a lot talking to him. I hope you do too. Watch the video above and click the link below to learn more. And don't forget to sound off by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page. Come on, talk nerdy to me!
JOHN MARZLUFF: What we've learned is these animals pay very close attention to us. They use their brains in a manner very similar to us to assess us, learn about us, respond to us, consider us, remember and emotionally process our activities.
CARA SANTA MARIA: Hi everyone. Cara Santa Maria here. And that's Dr. John Marzluff. He's a professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington. Can you guess the animal he just described? It's not an ape or a dog or a cat. He’s talking about crows. In fact, John's made a career studying crows. He's even written three popular books about them. And based on John’s research, we might want to rethink that whole "bird brain" insult. Not only do crows have amazing recall ability, they engage in all sorts of cool behaviors.
JM: They hold funerals, it appears, where a dead crow is--all the other crows gather around it and check it out. Crows also talk like parrots do. And they can emulate human voice perfectly. There was one that had flown around Missoula, Montana for several weeks gathering up dogs by yelling, "here dog! here dog! here boy, let's go!" Gathered up a whole herd of dogs and brought them to the university campus, kept them at bay under a tree, and then when students would be milling about, the crow would take off flying and have the dogs follow them and knock around the students. They seek revenge. When people throw things at them, they'll often drop things on them or poop on their car, all kinds of different, you know, tactics they use to get back at a person who's done them wrong.
CSM: And they snowboard. Seriously. Have you seen this video? But here’s another cool find when it comes to crows: John recently designed a study where researchers wore specific masks when they captured and handled wild crows, which was particularly threatening to the birds. Then the researchers measured the crows' response to those same masks when they encountered them later.
JM: The masks were not, in and of themselves, scary at all. I mean, one of them was Dick Cheney, which some people would consider scary, but we don't know that crows perceived him as scary to start with.
CSM: No comment. But the findings of the study were pretty astounding.
JM: These birds immediately recognized the face of the person that had captured them. I remember very clearly the very first time when we did this, I went out and walked with a mask that we had not used to catch the birds and really didn't get any response by the animals at all. And then I went out the next day with the mask that we had captured the birds with, and it took about 20 minutes before I encountered a group of birds that immediately started scolding and harassing me and mobbing and following me on campus. And that was cool, but every time we went out, it seemed, more and more birds were doing this. And so over time, the first few months or so, we might have initially had five or six birds scold us, and by the end of that month we had 20 or 30 that would do this. And I need to step back and tell you that we only caught seven birds ever doing this on our campus. And immediately, the number that were involved in apparently recognizing and responding to this threat was increasing. And what's even more amazing, what we've discovered, is that this memory of this dangerous person has persisted now for--still going on--seven years.
CSM: This made John want to learn more, so he set up imaging studies to see what was happening inside the crows' brains. It turns out their fear processing takes place in a brain region very similar to the human amygdala.
JM: It's even the right hemisphere that's most active relative to the left hemisphere of the brain. And again that's the exact same thing you'd see in a mammal that has a learned fear aversion: right hemisphere, amygdala, plus some forebrain activity. So it really looks like the forebrain of the bird is acting like the mammalian cortex, which is what we thought was such a great thing--especially in humans--to have this great cortex. Well birds have it too, and it does the same sort of things.
CSM: Apparently we're not so different after all. Crows are also highly attuned to human behavior--they've been living alongside us for millennia. And they're very social, a trait shared by domestic animals, like dogs.
JM: It was quite common at one point to have a pet crow. It's not legal now because they're protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But they were fabulous pets and they were quite common through all of, kind of, the World War II era on through the '60s, I would say. And actually I would advocate that we bring that kind of practice back because it's a great way to engage with nature.
CSM: What do you think about these fascinating creatures? Would you want to have a pet crow? Reach out on Facebook, Twitter, or leave your comments right here on The Huffington Post. Come on, talk nerdy to me!
See all Talk Nerdy to Me posts.Like Cara Santa Maria on Facebook.Follow Cara Santa Maria on Twitter.