The_Raven posted:

HEY GUISE WHATS GOIN ON IN THIS THREAD

Goon Boots posted:

Good find. I spent a bit of time trying to search for it on my own but couldn't find it. Here are some interesting corvidmations I found on the way.








https://i.imgur.com/Y8CwB99.mp4

worst ever at ping-pong posted:

Someone post the crows that solve water pressure puzzles by dropping rocks in one end to raise up bobbing food in the other end tia

bollig posted:

Crows are dope. I've been living in this city for like 8 years now and the crow population has absolutely exploded. My theory is that more people are letting their cats out, thus eating smaller birds, thus creating less competition for the same resources. It's quite astounding how many there are and I love it.

Anyway, I would love to have the crows on my side, so I guess the thing to do would be to just go for a walk and feed them every day. Is there preferred food peanuts? Unshelled?

Mr. Lobe posted:

peanuts in the shell are recommended by Marzluff, a UW corvid specialist

unsalted is preferable

Mr. Lobe posted:

When I lived in Seattle, I worked at a lab at UW that was about a 15 minute walk away from my apartment. At some point during my 3 year stay in that city I started feeding crows peanuts in the shell, and while they were reluctant at first, 5 or so months of patient entreaty earned me a the attention a group of birds that began to number in the dozens every time I left my home or the lab where I worked during daylight hours. Instead of merely collecting the peanuts that I had dropped in their presence after I cleared enough distance between them and myself, they began to actively follow me when I stepped outdoors and into their territory, sometimes even snatching from midair the nuts I tossed for them.

As endearing as I found them, in time I had to start walking through backstreets, alleys, and other unusual paths in order to avoid intimidating people with the mob of crows that followed me so closely. They would sometimes even menace people who crossed my path, swooping down at them to drive them away. And though I enjoyed the company of these scoundrels, I must have spent 40 dollars in peanuts on them every month to make sure I was never in short supply. I have never been much for pet ownership, but this particular relationship with animals suited me well. I never had to clean up after them, and on the occasions that I had to leave the city, I could be confident they could take care of themselves without me.

While I question whether they ever truly held for me any fondness in their little hearts or if they just saw me as a peculiar food dispenser, among them were particularly bold specimens who, on rare occasion, would land on shoulder-height walls and ledges, and permit me to extend out an offering which at times they would take directly from my hand. To know those particular birds had such trust for me felt like an accomplishment, like a communion with a wild intelligence that saw fit to abide my company, even if on mercenary terms.

Squizzle posted:

ok fine i will goodmine the thread eventually

you had to go and post amazing poo poo like this!!

sweet thursday posted:

In Cold Lake, Alberta the crows are giant and waddle around like chubby dogs.
https://youtu.be/HAxo3MFgFTY

I had to pee on the way home from a camping trip. Walked out with McDonald's takeout. Almost died in the parking lot.

bollig posted:

Crows are dope. I've been living in this city for like 8 years now and the crow population has absolutely exploded. My theory is that more people are letting their cats out, thus eating smaller birds, thus creating less competition for the same resources. It's quite astounding how many there are and I love it.

Anyway, I would love to have the crows on my side, so I guess the thing to do would be to just go for a walk and feed them every day. Is there preferred food peanuts? Unshelled?

Sharkie posted:

i wish i was a corvid

pros:
i would be smart
i could eat roadkill without being JUDGED by HATERS

cons
None

quote:

The corvid family--a widespread group of birds made up most prominently of crows, ravens, and magpies--are no ordinary birds, with a brain-to-body-weight ratio and cognitive abilities equal to apes and dolphins. This excerpt, from the great new book Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans_, by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, details an experiment in which students and faculty at the University of Washington tried to discover if crows can recognize individual humans--and what they'd do with that information._

A couple of days before Valentine's Day 2006, students and professor donned grotesque masks—bold, heavily browed, reddish-orange cavemen—and captured seven crows on the University of Washington's campus. They tagged the ensnared crows with standard plastic and metal bracelets like those we had fit onto Light Blue, Dark Blue's legs and released them after only a few minutes. On Valentine's Day John slipped into his Dick Cheney face and strolled across campus looking for crows to record their reactions. He found nine birds, and while one seemed a bit anxious and flew off calling, the others basically ignored him. The students were more reactive, as being Dick Cheney on a liberal college campus wasn't easy, but from the crows' perspectives Dick was just an average Joe.

The local crows screamed, dove, and followed anyone wearing a mask of Scott.Two days later, John left the Cheney mask in the lab and morphed once again into the caveman. He stepped outside his office building at 11:07, eager to learn whether the crows would remember the face of the man who had captured them earlier in the week. At 11:15, he found a crow near the student union building and began to approach. Immediately the bird flew into a tree and gave a series of harsh calls, flicked its tail, and stared directly down at him. This scolding behavior, identical to how these rowdy birds typically address their natural predators, quickly attracted a second bird. The pair now cautiously eyed John and issued a real tongue lashing. The first scolding bird was unbanded—John had never even handled this aggressive beast. But the second bird wore bands, signaling that it had personally met the caveman a few days earlier. This bird had good reason to scold—the caveman was a proven threat. But the first bird could have known only secondhand about the dangerous caveman. Perhaps she had seen us catch and band her colleague. John continued his walk and in total encountered thirty-one crows, three of whom scolded him.

The first run of the experiment was a success. At least three birds recognized and harassed the dangerous caveman. In contrast, none responded to the caveman prior to trapping, and none responded to the "control" face of Dick Cheney, who had never directly participated in trapping. We repeated these initial tests with similar results over the next year. We even recruited other students to run the tests for us. We wanted to make sure it wasn't just our imagination or perhaps the way we approached the crows that made them scold the caveman and ignore the vice president. We set the students loose on campus with masks and notebooks. Their results confirmed ours in every aspect: the crows scolded the caveman, not Cheney; many of the scolding birds were unbanded; and it was the face that triggered the ire of the crows.

We have continued and expanded our initial investigations. In addition to the caveman on campus, we have now confirmed other crows' abilities to discriminate dangerous from neutral faces in four new settings. And we have done so using masks molded from our friends' faces—ordinary men and women faces much less distinct than the caveman's. In downtown Seattle for example, our friend Scott's face was used during trapping. As with our campus experiment, the local crows screamed, dove, and followed anyone wearing his mask while ignoring those wearing any of the other five masks.

In rural Maltby, Vivian was the trapper. There she was scolded while Scott and the others were more or less ignored.

Siljmonster posted:

I say hello to every crow

Dustcat posted:

Mister Speaker posted:

Dan Aykroyd is a member of the corvid family, widely considered to be the smartest of birds.

Squizzle posted:

it could be even simpler than that: maybe they told one another it is a nice place to live, as a crow. that happens. not joking. sometimes crow populations will grow because word gets out that a place is nice and crows will move in