Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 323: Dr. Kaeli Swift

Episode Date: January 26, 2019

Dr. Kaeli Swift, Corvid Researcher and a literal Doctor of Crow Death Behaviors, joins the DTFH! This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site).

We are family. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and Jay Farrar.

Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store, and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. Greetings to you, oh beautiful friends. It is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening

to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And this is a very special episode, because it focuses on a creature that I love, the crow. My interest in crows started when I saw a YouTube video showing a child who liked to feed crows. That's not very interesting, you say. We all like to feed crows.

I just finished feeding some crows. Who doesn't feed crows? But here's what was fascinating about this particular clip. The crows had started bringing the child gifts. The only gift that I have ever received from an animal outside of the brown male that my dogs deliver to me on occasion, especially when it's raining, is it was an eyeball and a foot that my cat Bill,

years and years ago, brought into the house and sort of laid out on display for me. And I was horrified. I yelled at the cat, and I feel guilty. Even talking about it right now, I feel guilty. Because the cat was just offering a nice gift, and I was going full Jehovah meets Cain to reference an Old Testament moment that we know and love,

which is Cain and Abel. This is still the period of either God's evolution or man's evolution or, I don't know, mythology's evolution, where you just read some of this stuff and it seems like beyond alien, or it seems like a dream you would have within a dream, within a dream, within a dream. It just seems so odd. And you don't know how much of it

seems odd because you've heard it so many times or how much of it is just particularly odd. But the story of Cain and Abel, of course, is one in which Cain offers one type of sacrifice to the Lord. And Abel offers another. And I think Cain offered God meat. And Abel offered him veggies or something.

I don't remember which. I don't know if it's a commentary on vegetarianism. I don't know if it's a commentary on meat eating. I don't know if it's what it is. Exactly. It's just weird. But God liked one offering more than the other. And essentially did to Cain what I did to my cat, which

is, you know, why would you? This sucks. Why'd you kill this little rabbit? Interestingly enough, there's a crow connection here, which is that, and if you've no spoiler alert, but it is at the very beginning of the Bible, Cain kills Abel, Book of Genesis. Cain gets jealous and smashes Abel over the head with a rock.

And God comes, you know, I don't know, walking out of the forest, something weird. God, in the beginning of the Bible, is a very strange, strange God. And Cain tries to trick God or something. Because God's doing like, you know, the weird parent thing where, like, as a parent, you already know what your kid did, but you're asking them questions to see what they say.

So God asks, where's Abel? I mean, like, obviously God knows. He's omnipotent, theoretically. And Cain says, well, how would I know am I my brother's keeper? And then, you know, he gets in trouble because he killed. He's one of the first murderers. Now, here's where it connects to crows. In the Quran, it was a crow that actually showed Cain

how to bury a body. So in the Quran, I believe, there was some moment where the crow's like, hey, you better put some dirt on that brother of yours you just killed, or the Lord is going to be pissed. But it didn't work, you know, of course. And so Cain was sent east of Eden. And, you know, that's the beginning.

That's the book of Genesis. But yeah, the only gift I ever got was from a cat, and it was a dead pieces of a dead rabbit. And I should have been honored. But instead, I yelled at the cat. I wonder if God looks back at, and I was like, man, I was being such a jerk back then. If only I had just accepted both their gifts.

Or I was even questioning them. Why was I doing that weird game? Why was I doing, like, power dynamics with my creation? What's wrong with me back then? I was drinking, now yeah, I was drinking black hole juice back then. That's what it was. I was hammered.

Regardless, I was fascinated when I realized that crows will bring people gifts, little shiny objects, keychains, bits of aluminum foil, bottle caps, and just various things. And the people they bring the gifts to are the people who give them gifts. And crows love unsalted, unshelled peanuts.

So, I don't know, stuff like that's magical to me. Because to me, from a completely non-scientific perspective, it illuminates the reality that there are so many different societies and tribes and sort of networks of sentience happening on this planet, then we can imagine. Because if crows bring gifts, and you wanna look at it from my perspective, not the perspective

of a scientist who we have with us here today, from my perspective, it means that they're clever in a real specific way. And I think the gifts they bring is a kind of commentary on what they think of us. Which is, I guess you could say somewhat reductive. Yeah, the monkey descendants like shiny stuff. They just do.

No, you can't eat it. They just like shiny things that you can't eat. They're weird. I don't know, just bring them like, if you find something shiny, bring it to one of them. If they've been giving you peanuts. It's an interesting interaction. But what else talks like that?

What else observes us? In a past episode of this podcast, I was interviewing a shaman who said that the trees think it's funny that the monkeys can see them and know them as being sentient and animated with a identity and a spirit. But the humans who think they're so advanced can't even see that.

And so to me, the sort of fascinating blindness that human beings have when it comes to seeing things outside of the human experience, contemplating the possibility that there are so many forms of communication happening around them that aren't human at all. That who knows, maybe the wind talks. Maybe the way shadows fall on the ground

is some communication. I know what you're thinking, that way lies madness. You can't think everything's talking to you. But you can actually. I'm not saying like you think Tucker Carlson is telling you to go down to KFC and dig through the garbage to find a banana peel that has an address written on it

that will take you to a specific home where you'll find a USB drive that has upon it a map, which will show you how to get to one of the hidden bases in Antarctica. I'm not saying that. That's loony tune stuff. I'm talking about the idea of, for lack of a better way to describe it,

the universe as mirror. And that's just a game you can play with the universe. Is the universe really a mirror? Is everything you see a reflection of yourself? You could imagine that momentarily. Doesn't have to be that way. And you wouldn't want it to be that way because what a strangely sad, lonely, desperate

and narcissistic situation you might be in if that were the case. But temporarily you could imagine that. You could imagine that you had been in the presence of some powerful guru figure. And the guru was so magical and powerful that as one of her many teachings she decided to split herself up into an infinite number of components,

a planet and various ecosystems matter itself, atoms, quantum particles, and everything surrounding you. And you were sort of mid conversation with a very advanced being that was trying to show you something. And one of the ways that it had decided to talk to you was through crows and through crows bringing you little gifts. If you're someone who's ever received a gift from a crow,

wow, I mean, that just seems life changing. That seems like, how could you ever forget about that? The time you went outside and for sure a crow had brought you just a little pendant. It's pretty cool. Regardless, I've loved crows ever since I saw that on YouTube and at one point I was lucky enough to have a flock of crows that was hanging out around my house.

And so I started feeding them unsalted peanuts. And I would watch them. At first they, I had to be inside and I would have to like peer out a window. Cause if I was outside, they didn't, they wouldn't come. They didn't trust me at that point. But then gradually they warmed up to me a little bit. They never brought me any gifts, unfortunately.

From time to time I'd find like a little note up on their, on the roof, like this, you suck man. But I don't think that was from the crows. But one thing I did notice is they lined up. It was the craziest thing when they, when they were like, it's not like other birds, like when you're at a resort. And yeah, I go to resort sometimes. You know, resort birds, they just kind of like fall on bread.

You know, like they just like thousands of them, like a swarm of little tiny little filthy birds will just descend on crumbs of bread and they fight each other. It's like watching a little feathered dinosaurs fight. Crows aren't like that. They line up, at least the ones in my neighborhood. They lined up and they would, one at a time, they would go and get a peanut and then fly away.

Really interesting, really cool. I love crows. People are scared of them. Some people, they think they represent death cause they're, you know, their feathers are black but their feathers aren't just black. Like you have to really look at a crow and you'll see there's a lot of color in there

and they're beautiful and they're smart. And some of them even use tools. Also crows, well, they don't just bring shiny gifts to kids. They have some scandalous traditions as well. Some almost unspeakable things that they like to do with deceased crows. We knew a lot about crows but this particular aspect of COVID life

was only recently documented by today's brilliant guest. Dr. Kaylee Swift is here with us today. We're gonna jump right into this episode but first some quick business. This spectacularly cross-centric episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by the undulating beings of light who in this particular dimension

call themselves Squarespace. Squarespace, it's where you go if you want to build the most beautiful website that ever existed. Why build a website, you might ask? I don't have an eatery in Brooklyn. I'm not selling baked Afghani, Mexicali, Irish breads. There's other reasons, my friend.

Great reasons, maybe you just wanna honor someone that you love. Why not buy the domain name, honorsomeonethatyoulove.com? And yes, it's available, I just checked. And though my trembling, disgusting, sweaty, sugary finger wants to buy that domain name right now, I leave it to you. Honorsomeonethatyoulove.com, think of all the possibilities

for that domain. Maybe every time someone sends you a name of someone they love, you donate $50,000 to a shepherd somewhere. Or maybe every time someone sends you the name of someone that they love, you throw a pie at the wall of your apartment and film it. Think of how much that won't mean to someone

to know that you have desecrated the wall of your rental unit with pies, just to honor the name of someone that they love. All you gotta do is go to squarespace.com, squarespace. They've got everything you need to create a beautiful website. Everything's optimized for mobile right out of the box. They've got built-in search engine optimization,

free and secure hosting, nothing to patch or upgrade ever, and 24-7 award-winning customer support. And I've tested it, it is actually great customer support. Squarespace, it's a fantastic way to do email campaigns, promote your business, blog or publish content, showcase your work, or to create a website where there's just a webcam on your wall. And somebody sends you the name of a friend they love

and you walk to the wall and you write the name and Sharpie on the wall. And then you throw a pie at it. What's better than that? Who wouldn't want that for their birthday? All you have to do is head over to squarespace.com, forward slash Duncan for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch,

use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com, forward slash Duncan. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Honor someone that you love.com. This could be the next Google.

And it's yours for the taking. Just head over to squarespace.com, forward slash Duncan, use offer code Duncan, you will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. I just hired a voice actor to read the Patreon commercial. And here he is, everybody, professional VO artist,

Larry Schill. Oh, there friend, you don't know me, but I know you. I've been watching you for a long time, waiting, hoping, praying, burning various and seniorly particulates, sending the smoke signal through every single laboratory mechanism I came, in the hopes of summoning you

to the DTFH Patreon. Head over to Patreon.com, forward slash DTFH, and initiate yourself into the swirling, big, slurry of hot dog precursor meat that is the Patreon DTFH. You're gonna get commercial free episodes of the DTFH, you're gonna get access to Discord server. And now, you're gonna get a lot of video streams

where we fuck around and don't quite know what we're doing yet. You're gonna connect with a co-operative superorganism of which I'm not a small bird. You're gonna merge, blend, group. You're gonna harmonize. You're gonna homeostasisize. You're gonna lacquerize your eyes.

That sweet, sweet pineal nipple you call your third eye must protrude through the portal that is the DTFH so that my children can suck all upon it for their own. Go now, go run, run as fast as you can to the Patreon. Patreon.com for plus DTFH, so make yourself known. We need to circle upon your third nipple now. Also, you gotta let your neighbors know who you are. Go to donkatrosion.com and click on the shop button.

Show them that you do not drink cross-milk. Whatever you do, we've got stop-drinking cross-milk stickers and drinking cross-milk stickers. We've been getting reports from various state agencies and some of the professionals out there are replacing the drinking cross-milk sticker under stop signs. So that the stop sign seems to say stop drinking cross-milk, don't do that, it's illegal to go to jail for 30 years for that shit.

We don't want anybody to go to jail, especially not our sweet listeners. There's also t-shirts and posters over there about sweet payments. Okay, I'm out of here. Here's Duncan. And now, without further ado, everyone strap in and prepare to have your mind blasted with the dawning realization that you're surrounded by hyper-intelligent flying creatures that could potentially bring you gifts.

What is here today is a scientist whose research has appeared in National Geographic, PBS, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Science Friday, and many other great publications. She studies the way crows deal with death. Is there anything more hardcore than that? I don't think so. But if you ask me, the only way that crows would truly reveal themselves

to someone is if they knew that that someone actually loved them. And again, that's coming from me, someone who is clearly not a bird scientist because a bird scientist would never use the word bird scientist. Regardless, if you have even the slightest curiosity when it comes to crows, or rooks, or ravens, or birds in general, head to corvidresearch.blog and check out the brilliant writing of today's esteemed guest. Now, everyone, please welcome to the Dugga Trussell Family Hour Podcast,

today's guest, Dr. Kaley Swift. It's the Dugga Trussell Family Hour Podcast. Dr. Swift, welcome to the Dugga Trussell Family Hour Podcast. Thank you so much for appearing on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited. Me too. This came from just strange good luck just because I've been doing this Chrome Elk stuff, which is a different podcast altogether,

and someone pointed me in the direction of your Twitter account and we started talking and you were kind enough to agree to be on the show. And it's exciting for me because some time ago, I don't know if it was on YouTube or where it was, I saw a great documentary or a piece on the amazing experiment you did with how crows react to death. And I was blown away. I wonder if you could just describe that experiment for the listeners.

Yeah, so the impetus for this study was basically that humans for centuries have known that crows respond, crows and many other corvids, in fact, seem to really pay attention to and respond strongly to their dead. And so the idea of that in and of itself isn't something that I or our team contributed to science. What we were interested in looking at is, okay, so they seem to do this thing around their dead and it's really interesting. Why? Why are they doing it? What's sort of the adaptive value of this behavior?

And there's lots of ways that we could potentially explain it, right? Maybe they are, maybe it has some social significance. I'm sorry, would you talk a little bit about what they do around their dead? I watched some of your YouTube clips on it and it is wild. Yeah, so basically what happens is dead crows on the ground, first bird comes in and it's going to produce what we call a scold call, which is basically an alarm call, right? It alerts the other birds.

If you've ever seen them get really upset because there's a cat running around or a hawk in the sky, you've heard this call. And that results in recruitment of other crows to the area and they all get together and they're like, oh my God, and flying all around and landing in trees. And they might be really loud. And then they'll get like really quiet maybe for a few minutes and get loud. And that kind of happens over the course of about 10 to 20 minutes. And then they'll basically disperse.

And that is the most consistent way that the behavior manifests. Now, as some of my later studies showed, and we can talk about that in a minute, it can get a little different than that sometimes. But that was sort of the behavior. When we say crows have funerals, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about birds noticing when one of crows noticing when another crow dies and forming groups in response to that. And freaking out.

And really freaking out. Like that's Daryl. Holy shit, Daryl died. Everybody, oh no, it's like intense. I mean, it's sad. It's just, it's exactly kind of what humans do when they see a dead body. You know, I mean, we don't do that. It's like we don't scream, but many humans do scream when we see it.

I mean, we freak out. Yeah. So, and it is, and that's why I have, I don't, I don't have as many reservations about using the word funeral when I describe my work, because I think that is the most simple way to communicate that essentially that's happening if you have animals responding really strongly and forming a group in response to a dead individual. Like that's basically what a funeral is.

Now, I don't want to communicate that. That means I'm assuming that it comes with all the sort of emotional baggage or ritualistic baggage that it does in a human context. I don't know that part yet for crows. Are you aware of the, sorry, are you aware of the verse in the Quran referring to crows teaching Cain how to do burials? I am. Sorry.

Sorry. One second. One second. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. One second. One second.

So much for that. Go ahead. Sorry. What were you saying? The, the really interesting thing is those kinds of fables are, are found actually in a lot of different religious texts. Wow. So yeah.

So humans, like I said, humans have known that these birds pay really a lot for a long time. And that's really evidenced when you look at how we've incorporated crows and Ravens and other Corvids into our own parables and creation stories in, in terms of how humans respond to their dead. Do you have a, can you name a few different like cultural references to crows and they're dead or sorry, just one moment. Sorry.

That keeps happening. I'm just going to repeat that question. Just one second. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry about that. Offhand. Do you have any other reference?

So there's a, there's a really, and I am not, I am not a religious historian. Right. So I always get worried cause I'm like, Oh, I might say that these two things are different. And then they're actually like, actually, those are the same texts. It's just, so, but the other one I know is the, I think it's called the Talmud, which is a Jewish religious document. There's a really similar story in terms of Ravens demonstrating how to bury

their dead in that, in that one. But if, but then there's lots of other ways that these birds appear in religious texts, like in the Quran, there's a story about why crows are horse that has to do with them betraying Allah. So there's lots of it. And of course, many people are familiar with all the ways that crows appear in different indigenous peoples creation stories. And so it's really fascinating.

Or, you know, you can look Japan, you can go to India because these birds exist on almost every continent aside from Antarctica. Yes. And because they've so closely and historically associated with humans for so long, they're really unique in their presence really in our cultures globally and across time. It's wild and they get such a bad rap. Crows are, can you hear me?

I lost you. Oh shit, hang on. Okay, I can hear you now. I lost you for a second. Sorry for y'all listening. We're just getting some new technology work down here. Crows get such a bad rap. They do.

And it's, it's a bummer. And a big part of that is, so in, in European Western cultures, crows have long been associated with death. And, but the really interesting thing to me is actually for a long time, that wasn't a bad thing the way it is now. It was actually so, so having a crow come and sit outside your house was like, yeah, okay, I guess you're going to die tomorrow. Like that's a bummer.

But it was a really great thing. Because then it allowed you to get your affairs in order and make amends with God. But then we kind of like the plague hit and you had other instances in history where you have mass human casualty. That's when we kind of soured on it. Right. Because there were just lots of dead people everywhere and lots of

Corvids taking advantage of this feast. Right. And we were like, well, we don't like that part. Because in those cultures, that's not a good thing. But in other cultures being eaten by birds is a good thing. Right. That's the Tibetan sky burial in European cultures. So, so that's actually a lot of where that negativity comes from.

But again, you look at other parts of the world and you won't really see that negativity. So it's very culture specific. Great. Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's just battlefields and whenever there's, you know, some kind of just disaster, you're probably going to see a crow eating a person. It's going to be a tough thing to watch.

Now, before we get to like the, one of the really interesting things you discovered about crows, I wanted to tell you a few things as I was researching this that I had no idea about. And one of them really bothers that shit out of me because I love crows, but I also love raccoons. And raccoons eat crows. I had no idea. Yeah.

For sure. Any, I mean, crows, like a lot of birds, right? They're egg, eggs are delicious. Everything in nature loves eggs. Right. So even animals that don't otherwise eat meat will be like an egg. Great. So it is no surprise to me that an arboreal mammal like a raccoon,

that's a generalist is going to be very keen come breeding season time on crow eggs and crow babies because they're just a delicious super high protein little snack. Wow. Just little buffets, little crow buffets for those swine to chow upon. This is basically studying all this has been really wonderful. And it, one of the things that I realized is that I've sort of been leaning into this idea that scientists like you basically know everything.

Like, you know, kind of the, the idea of like, well, there are these satellites zooming around the planet and we've mapped the entire planet. And we know what pretty much what's on the surface of the planet. Similarly, I had this completely ridiculous idea that we figured this stuff out. And then as I was looking at the current research that you're doing, what are the birds you're studying right now? They're called Canada Jays, but some of your listeners may know them as

Gray Jays, which was their former name. Canada Jays and that you're, you're studying how they, they're, they're eating patterns or where they lay eggs. I can't remember the specifics you were looking at. I just remember being kind of shocked that we didn't already know that. And then I started thinking, whoa, birds around us all the time. And do we barely understand them? Is that a fair statement?

Or we still have very little understanding of what, what they're up to. No, I think that's absolutely fair. And I mean, you kind of have to look at it with, in relativity, right? Like we know a lot more about crows relative to most other birds, but we still, in the scheme of things, know very little about that. We just happen to know a lot more about them than a lot of other things. But yeah, like really basic, like the two big areas that really seem to surprise people in terms of being like, why you guys don't know how that works

are communication. Crow communication is like the black box in science. I mean, it's just where, where tons of effort goes in and just nothing comes out. And so that's one big area. Cause that's a question I get emailed all the time is like, here's a video of the crow I feed and it's making this strange noise. Can you tell me what it's trying to say?

And I'm like, no, I'm sorry, I can't. I really wish I could. I'd be much more successful probably if I could do that. But unfortunately. Why, why is it, why can't we figure it out? What is it that they're not making the same sound? Like what's the difference between say, I'm crow communication patterns and dolphin communication patterns that people where, where in dolphin research

and my cursory examination of it, it seems like they think that dolphins have names for each other. There seems to be more of a decoding of their language. Is this not happened with the Corvids? Not really. We do know. So there's bits and pieces. So like the, the alarm call I was trying to describe in reference to the

funeral, like we can identify an alarm call and we know what purpose it serves to alarm and alert other birds. Yeah. We know that they have things like assembly calls, which are a little different that are like, everybody get together. They have dispersal calls, which sort of conclude, but they have so many different sounds. So the, the main answer to your question is, and this, I mean, we don't know

the answer, but our best guess is, I think one of the things that makes studying crow communication so much more difficult than a lot of other animals is I suspect that crow communication is highly context specific. So in a lot of animals, they have a call or sound that they use in only specific context. So it's easy to evoke that context and be like, Oh, and then there's the resulting sound that we expected. If we play that sound, the behavior that we expected, right?

Versus with crows. So one of, one of the, um, calls that they make that most frequently are, is the source of questions directed to me is, uh, these kind of like low, like kind of wow calls. Like they'll be like, whoop, whoop, whoop. Right. Or some variety of something like that. There's these very low, quiet sounds and people will be like, Oh my gosh,

I was feeding my, you know, my crow today. They come every day and it bowed its head and it made this sound. And what is it saying to me? The reason that it's been so difficult to parse things like that is because as an example, I've heard that sound when they're alone. I've heard that sound in the course of when they're having a funeral. I've heard it when they're with their mate. I've heard it when they're with a big group of crows, when they're agitated,

when they're at rest, when they're being fed by a person, right? And so because of all of those different context that they make it in, it's extremely difficult to parse. Probably that means, like I said, is that they have all of these different sounds and they can make them in these different contexts where the crows are keying in on all of the components to then understand what it means in that context. The best sort of analogy I can give in human world is if we think about things like tonal languages, where you have one word,

but depending on how it's said, it can mean very different things. So I have a feeling it's kind of like that, maybe. I mean, that seems like a good explanation for why the fuck we haven't been able to, like, figure out what they're saying ever. Well, this is, to me, one something that's really curious is that there seems to be, and maybe it's just publicity, or maybe people are just naturally more interested in dolphins than they are in crows, but I'm sure you're familiar with John Lilly and the dolphin research that was done.

Not super. It's pretty curious. It's John Lilly and I think Carl Sagan, a few other, this is during, this is the birth of SETI, and they became really interested in studying dolphin communication, not just because they wondered, like all of us wonder what dolphins are saying to each other, but also because the idea was if we do make contact with some kind of extraterrestrial, then we need a model for understanding communication from a thing that is from a completely different environment. And, you know, so much of human communication is based on our, you know, the way we walk around

in our terrain and how we experience the limitations that we have. And so anyway, I wonder why people haven't focused more on these creatures that are so obviously intelligent. And do you think that at some point there could be the possibility of maybe using AI, like what they're using with dolphin communication to start decoding what birds are saying, what crows are saying specifically? Yes and no. I say yes because in terms of, I think what you could get out of that effort, it would be well worth it and probably similar to what you're describing we've been able to do with dolphins. Yes.

But I say no in that I don't have any optimism that anyone could get funding to pursue that project. Wow. Because it's just a little too like the dolphin thing, like, I think is a much easier sell for people in terms of understanding its value to humans, which is, you know, for better or worse, so much of how we rationalize or justify scientific pursuits. And I feel like making that argument with birds and getting the kind of grant funding that you would need to do that which is just unlikely. You would have to convince the military. The way in is this is what we do. By we I mean you or someone. So the idea what you would have to like convince the military that there might be a way to talk to crows.

And then you've got the ultimate surveillance technology of all time, you know, and what a sad paranoid world we would enter into have suddenly every time you see a crow. You had to wonder if you're being monitored, you know, this is to know if I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but that's actually already kind of happened. So the original facial recognition study that my advisor, John Marsliff, who's a faculty member at the UW did and this was the facial recognition study that's on the PBS special murder of crows that a lot of people are familiar with. That's what I saw. And this took place about 10 years ago. So that study was actually funded by the DoD. Whoa, no way. That is so crazy. So they were like that that is to mind boggling the military just scans all variables in phenomena nature and just puts in one one side one column here's what we might be able to use. Right.

Yeah, yeah. And so for that study it was, I mean, you know, who knows what they really were were thinking but it was pitched as a. Kind of search and rescue thing that if there was a large, you know, a good prospect of crows being able to find people based on face, you know, their faces that there could be some real value in terms of searching for missing people. Yeah, now search and rescue. Yeah. That's so crazy. Knowing the behavior of our military. You know, I'm feeling there's maybe some other. Yeah, some other things.

You know, like helping soldiers find like lakes they could swim in, or probably, you know, just like finding like good, I don't know areas where there might be some food to eat definitely would never be used to track down people and drop bombs on them. The this is you I was reading your blog and it seems like you your interest in Corvid started with this with being interested in the way animals communicate or the connectivity or the community or the sort of I don't know how would you put it the interspecial. I don't know where did you ever have you ever just fantasized about some time in human history where we actually can establish a linguistic communication with other animals. Oh my gosh, yes, I mean, so much like, if I could just ask a crow questions. Yeah, I mean just imagine the possibility for deepening our understanding with the natural world and with wildlife if we could do this I mean it would just be. It would be amazing. I mean, it would kind of put me out of the job, but that'd be okay for everything we would get out of that but. But yes, it would, it would be just so wonderful because there's so many things that they do that like we've been talking about just remain entirely mysterious to us.

What are some of those things. So like the communication thing that we talked about some of the other big ones are. So roosting. So if you live in a metropolitan area or a rural area, even one of the things that you may have seen before is come kind of evening time. You may see big flocks of crows flying over your house or you know during your commute. And the reason for that is that crows and some other birds engage in a behavior called communal roosting where even though sexually mature like mated crows have territories that they go to during the day and that they hang out on all year round and they defend those territories from other crows. At night, all your local crows basically go to the same central areas to sleep. And the reason for that is probably in large part driven by just insulation from predation right if you're sleeping, which is you and your mate and a predator comes. You know, you're a lot more vulnerable than if you're in a big group of, you know, 15,000 crows. So that's so right and that's kind of a nice story but there's lots of nuance there and details about how those functions happen that we don't know really anything about like for example, the family sleep together every night.

Right. Do they sleep in the same part of the roost every night. Right. If they don't sleep together, who do they sleep near how are those decisions arrived at what do they talk about at the roost. And we know, depending on the species, we know a little bit more than I would say that we do for American crows like for example in common ravens. Research was done a couple decades ago that demonstrated that ravens that know about where food is like a big food bonanza like a moose carcass actually signal to other ravens at the roost that they know where food is and they recruit birds to come. And so before we jump to any conclusions, a lot of people are like, Oh my gosh, Ravens so nice. Right. Sharing.

I love them. Yes. Really the reason though is that a pair of ravens that has a moose carcass on their territory is going to fiercely defend that carcass. So you need about seven birds. If you're if you're alone, like if you don't have a mate and you're just wandering around alone raven and you see this big moose carcass. If you're going to feed from that, you need about six other birds there. Six other ravens. Wow.

Or the adult pair is just going to like beat you down. Got you. So it's like an army. It's a gang. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not this like altruistic food sharing. It's if I'm going to have access to this, I need help.

Right. But still, my God, the implication there is while it's planning. Yeah. It's what's the name and there's a name for that. Right. There's a name I just learned. What is that called when it when a and it only happens in a few and as far as we know in a few animal species displacement. Is that what it's called?

No. I think you're thinking maybe Prospection. Okay. So Prospection is when animals sort of reflect on past experiences to plan for future ones. Right. Yeah. I'm trying to think of what other jargony words. That's cool.

Whatever. Who cares about the word? It's just, you know, this is this. Just knowing this expands my universe so much and it, you know, it's just like a classic, you know, stoner psychedelic person. When I look at crows, I get this, you know, and I went, I started feeding them by my house in the hopes that they would bring me gifts, which is another thing I'd like to talk with you about, but I just started watching them.

And, you know, I don't know how much of it is just confirmation bias or wanting the world to be magical. But I said, you know, okay, if I go to the, like the times I've seen like chimpanzees, you look at them and there is like something that's just more aware than say my poodle. You know, there's the way they're looking at things and the way you, there's something in it that is, I don't know, it just, I don't see why humans wouldn't be able to gauge levels of consciousness or this, or cognizance and other beings, but similarly with crows, when I was watching them, they seemed aware that I was the one feeding them and they seemed

to like get, like get used to the fact that I was not like they would differentiated me from other humans, you know, and, and also, but this is where probably you'll disagree if you shoot it down, doctor. I deserve to have this shut down, but I swear one of them like seemed to like, I don't want to say thank me, but like he started like looking at me and made like a weird like movement and a sound and then would fly off. I don't know. Maybe it was just saying like these peanuts suck.

Get better. You're feeding us the worst peanuts in the neighborhood, but it did seem like there was some attempt to convey something to me. Do you hear reports of that? Or have you noticed that? Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I think, um, I think for people that closely watch and spend time with crows, it's nearly impossible to not read deeply into their behavior.

And as a citizen of the natural world, I think generally speaking, that's mostly just an entirely wonderful thing. Right. Like, you know, if we did that with everything, this world would be a much better place. As a scientist, I, I'm a little bit like more grumpy about, not grumpy, but you know what I mean? Like I have to just be a little more restrained because it is our nature to project. Right.

That's what people do. And you really need to look no further for evidence of that than our relationship with dogs. Um, and there's been some great, um, books and papers that have come out about how kind of badly humans have botched our understanding of dogs because of how much we project. Um, and so that's like a whole, that's like a whole different thing. So, so with my scientist hat on was the crow saying, thank you. Probably not.

It was probably saying, I like these peanuts. Keep them coming. And you know, and I think, I think that's how a lot of that kind of stuff happens is an accident, the crows do something accidentally and you as a person are like, oh my gosh, this was amazing. Here's all the food. Like, do that again. And then the crows are like, oh, but think how often, how much do we do that with each

other? I mean, we don't even need to go to dogs. How many times have you thought that someone was, you know, thinking something about you that they were thinking or, you know, you, you, you project your own neurosis and insecurity onto pretty, I'm not you specifically, but, uh, yeah. Do you, do you feel like your study, like your study of, of Corvids and your connection with the natural world is in some way helped you understand your connection with not that humans aren't part of the natural world, but with, with your fellow human beings.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, and there's, I think there's lots of different ways that you can answer that question, but to me, the most interesting answer, which is maybe not exactly what you were going for, but one of the most interesting things I've learned from this study is how important crows are for such a wide variety of people. And that's been, I think the most important thing I've learned about humans from the, from my studies with crows is just being like, like a lot of people, and I say this very sincerely, really depend on their relationships with these birds or companionship.

And, and a connection. And, and I love, I love that about crows. I think that makes them so special, but it also says a lot about, you know, I think us as humans and really our need to connect with other life forms. Um, and yeah, I just think that's such a wonderful thing. I just saw this, um, I was watching, you know, I love watching, you know, there's this technological conference that happens every year where all the new technological innovations that are about to hit the market show up.

And, uh, one of them is this, you know, robot that is, it just hugs. It's this strange little, I know it's really cool to it, but they, so basically what they figured out about androids or humans connection, the human connection to robots is that if you make a robot too realistic, it becomes terrifying. And yeah, what is the, um, uncanny valley, the uncanny valley. That's right. So they're realizing why do we even have to make them look like us? Nobody, we humans form so many connections with like crows, dogs, cats, mice.

I just saw somebody has some kind of like, uh, emotional support alligator or crocodile that they're bringing around. So we make all these connections with things out there. Uh, and, and this was just as these adorable beings are going to be sold and used in parts of the world where the populations are aging. And there are these epidemics of loneliness that are happening. Uh, and part of me likes it. And then part of me feels real saddened by it, so to speak, because there, there's

seems something kind of empty in the idea that we're mostly, it's a one way street or that we're surrounded by living or screens upon, which we're just seeing our own projections. Uh, I would like to think that crows like us back. I don't, I don't disagree that they do. I think crows, they definitely like us back when we feed them. I mean, like they love, it's, it's, but, and I don't say that, um, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like cynically, right? I mean, I, when people feed me, I like them back. It's very genuine. So I, I, you know, I don't think that's at all a bad thing, but, um, but yeah, I think for crows and their connections with people, that connection is very much driven by resource sharing. Yeah. I have peanuts.

Tell, tell me about their gift giving though. This is another thing that popped up on my radar sometime ago. This is actually what got me really interested in the crows and crows is that they actually give gifts to some people. If you're lucky, a crow will, and you wrote a wonderful article on this on your, uh, blog, um, corvid research.blog, but could you talk a little bit about the phenomena of crows giving gifts? Yeah.

So, um, as you described, basically people who routinely feed crows, and it's important that that is both a regular behavior and it's in a consistent location. So like, if you feed them on your walk to work, this probably isn't going to happen to you, um, but people who, who have like platforms in their backyards or things like that, uh, have reported to us from all over the world, um, this experience of they put food out and then they went to check the platform and make sure all the food it was eating. And there was some kind of object there and what that object is varies a lot.

I mean, I've seen earrings, chicken bones, leaves, rocks, keys, uh, all kinds of stuff. So, so there is no dispute that that happens. The question is, if we were able to have our crow, you know, translator device, we said, what is, why are you actually doing this? There's still the question of, are they doing it as a gesture of like, thank you. You know, will you give me food? I'm going to give you something. Or if it's this idea of kind of what I was describing earlier, this kind of

accident that gets reinforced, so they keep doing it. So, how would it be reinforced? So if a crow, um, you know, was playing with something and it's flying in the sky and it's got this key that it picked up because it was like, hmm, this is weird. I'm kind of curious. And it goes down to the platform and it's like, oh, okay, peanuts. Well, I'd rather have peanuts than this key. So it flies away and you go out and you're like, oh my God, this crow just gave me a

present. Here's some cheese. Like thanks, man. And then it was like, oh, apparently if I leave stuff here, my, you know, quality or amount of food gets bumped up. And so that reinforces them doing the behavior. It's, it's like any conditional learning. Um, well, if they also, if there's this ability for them to communicate with each

other about things that aren't in their direct vicinity and invite others to come, maybe they, you know, maybe, maybe they're as astounded. Maybe there's skeptical crows or like those lumbering pigs don't give us food. They, they don't even see us. Don't that's a bunch of hogwash or maybe there's floating around in crow communities like, listen, bring them a key chain and they gave me cheese. I don't know why that's what they do. They're weird.

They love these weird metal things. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a mystery. And, and for me, uh, I love that mystery. I mean, that's why I love about these birds is there's just so many examples of that. And that's what keeps them just so active in my mind is I just, I'm constantly

being surprised by them and it gives me so much fodder for just curiosity. And I love that. It does. Yeah. Me too. Just this conversation. I mean, I'm telling you, this is like everyone is so excited about the possibility of one day encountering aliens.

Everyone's so excited about communicating with some other civilization from far away. Meanwhile, we're surrounded by other civilizations that are doing their own thing that seem to have their own, um, language or some version of a language. And we just ignore them. We don't accept people like you. Uh, and, and this is, you know, I just, I just brought a child into the world. And this is the kind of thing that I'm going to teach him that is going. I think I wish someone had told me when I was a kid, you know, cause we are taught

uh, if we are even taught about animals, we're usually taught in a very kind of like basic way in biology or if we're taught about animals, it's maybe the opposite, which is, um, you know, I don't know, during a peyote ritual, somebody tells you that they can see inside your chakras or whatever. But like just to have a real scientist talking about the fact that these beings are gift giving planning, um, creatures, that's to me, that's magical. That's really exciting. I just, I know, weird way.

I hope we never do figure out what they're saying. I think that might not be good for them if we suddenly discovered what their language was. It probably wouldn't because I'm sure we would just find ways to exploit it in ways that would not be to their benefit. But, but I actually, yeah, I haven't ever quite thought about it in that context, but I really love that idea that, um, we do, we do put a lot of effort into finding other kinds of life forms.

And, and I don't say that to, to hate on, you know, all of my, um, you know, colleagues and friends that do that kind of work. I think, I think it takes all kinds, but it's culturally, it does seem like we have a lot of interest in that in ways that we don't seem to have in the organisms, just right around us that are still, as you say, so mysterious. And, and I agree, and it's funny, you know, for me, I totally agree with the idea that it does feel very magical, but for me, where that comes from is the, and this may not make any sense, but it's, it's how non magical it is.

That makes it magical to me, right? Cause I'm like that, that just the things that they do, right? Like we can study all of the amazing behaviors that these birds exhibit and we can look at how their natural history and their various needs and yada, yada, their brain facilitates all of these amazing behaviors. And that's the very non magical part of it. And yet in the end you're left with this sense of deep awe that is wonderful. Yes.

That deep awe, I got a lot of theories on what that may be. I think maybe that's what enlightenment must be. Is it not like suddenly seeing angels or gods or seeing through walls or whatever, but just suddenly realizing in a kind of consistent way that we're living in the most miraculous thing and that it's just been there all along right in front of us, right in front of us. And we haven't seen it. I think it's a, you know, um, as a sad state of affairs that this knowledge that

you're putting out there is, uh, um, not known by a lot of people, you know, because that's the problem. We're all looking for aliens when they're, they're gift giving birds right in front of us. And also if we can't talk to the crows, if we don't even know what they're saying, when they make those odd noises at our doorsteps, right? How do we expect to have a conversation with some kind of octopoid star sailor from, you know, like a black hole?

How do we think we're going to be able to talk to them? That seems weird. Um, I don't mean to keep going on and on about this, but has anyone in your field or have you considered the ethical implications of, uh, what would happen should some AI or some of something emerged that does allow us to have these conversations with these animals? Uh, you know, for example, what would happen if we realize, Oh, not only they, do they communicate, but, um, they have really strong opinions about stuff.

And they're assholes, you know, what if we just find out they just don't like humans or they think we suck or they're, you know what I mean? People catch wind of the fact that crows just are snobs, crows. You know what I mean? They're just like, they make, they talk shit. Crows are like the most shit talking bird. You realize like all this time you've been feeding them peanuts, they've been up in the trees, like, wow, you've gained some weight.

Yeah. Look at that stupid hat. Look at him. He thinks, he thinks we like him. Bring him a key chain. Look how excited he gets. He's an idiot. Do you know, but, you know, but do you ever consider that?

Like I, sometimes I think the best thing that can happen for dolphins is for them to never ever translate their, for their language to not be translated. Cause humans are such exploitive beings that how long before crows, you know, we have them like answering phones in a phone bank for peanuts. How long, you know what I mean? How long before we start using them is like, it's some kind of work animal. Well, I mean, so that already, that also is happening, not, um, in more of a theoretical sense, but, but some of your listeners and maybe you might be

familiar a year ago, I think it was, there was like a Dutch company startup that we're trying to get this idea off the ground of training crows to pick up litter in exchange for treats. Oh yeah. I heard about that. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And that's, that's exactly. So the, so the question there is, uh, and we could talk about how actually effective that would be separately if you want to, but in just, in terms of the ethics of it, yeah, I think it circles back to this idea of like, really? That's kind of what it's come to. Like we feel okay with training this wild animal to do this thing for us because we can't even train ourselves to do this. Like that feels good.

Yeah. Cause I don't think it does. No. So, so to answer your question about how much I think about that, like for me, the answer is, I don't, I don't even have to go that far in the future to these, to those kinds of, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, hypothetical scenarios where we have, we've translated their language because I already see now this tendency that we have to moralize and create a

value system for animals based on how we feel about them. Like that's already happening. And it's already sucks. Yeah. And so that's why with crows, I, I worry a little bit because, because projecting is so easy to do with these birds. They're so charismatic. They're so human-like in a lot of ways.

It's, it's very easy for us, um, to, to kind of put them on this value system. And to me, that's so dangerous for, for two reasons. One is because, yeah, if you decide that an animal is an asshole, a species, an asshole, then how are we going to treat them? Black cats, for example, black cats, look at what happened. You know, black cats get tortured by people for just purely superstitious reasons. Go ahead. Sorry.

And then the second reason is the flip side of that though is most organisms are not human-like. Then we're not really going to be able to put them on that scale, which then means that we have this small group of mostly really charismatic megafauna. So things like orcas and chimps and maybe crows that we're like, we love them. They deserve a lot of our, you know, empathy and thoughts and protections. And then we have all these other animals that most people have never even heard of that aren't very charismatic.

And we're like, well, kind of who cares if they go extinct? I mean, what are they doing? Same with people. Yeah. So that's the, that's the dichotomy that concerns me gravely, which is why my sort of, when folks ask me as a scientist, my perspective on the emotional lives of crows, based off what we know now, my answer has always been like, look, when we look at the behaviors of crows, when we look at their brains, there's

nothing about a crow or maybe a better way to put this is there's nothing about a person we can point to and see and say, see that thing, that feature we have. That's what allows us to have these really emotional lives, right? We don't know what that is. So when we look at dolphins and we look at crows and we look at elephants, we can't say like, oh, see, they're missing that. So that must mean that they don't feel these emotions deeply just like we do. But on the flip side, because of this tenacity we have to then say, oh, these

animals feel like us, they, then we must value them and treat them better. I also think it's important to recognize that we know in the natural world, there are tons of examples of animals that have taken ubiquitous features, like we'll use sight as an example and really gone to town with them, right? So you think about like a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp perceives the world in a way that for the average person is impossible to envision. They just, they see more colors than we do. I just can't imagine what it would be like to live in that world.

So we know that it's possible for animals to take traits and exploit them in ways that are pretty unique to their species. So I think for me, the most comfortable way to look at the emotional lives of non-human animals is to recognize that there's no reason, there's no feature they're missing that would exclude them from that. And in fact, adaptively, it probably makes a lot of sense that crows and elephants, et cetera, feel deeply about their partner or about their offspring. Cause that would make them more successful.

But on the other hand, different animals are not just people in human costumes. Maybe our emotional intelligent lives is our mantis shrimp vision. It's the thing that we, that we share on some level with all, with most other organisms, what we kind of ran away with. And for me, that balance helps me preserve this sense of why don't we just treat all animals with kindness and respect for their own intrinsic value. Regardless of whether or not they're super sad when their kiddo dies or not. That's wonderful.

That's so wonderful. God, I'm going to have to stop eating meat now. Wow. That's so good. Are you a vegetarian? I am not a vegetarian, but we eat pretty limited meat and we, um, make an effort not to eat farmed meat. Yeah. See, this is the thing.

You know, it's almost like the, the, the, what you're talking about is so great. Cause it just should be just a generalized compassion and for all living things. But also the many industries that would be completely disrupted by any kind of technology that allowed us to experience the emotions of animals, particularly animals that we eat, it would, it would really shake things up. And you know, even more than that, if someone, if there was the ability just to feel the emotions of people that we affect, I think it would be a radical shift in society.

Listen, I could go on and on asking you questions about how emotional crows are, but I stopped you in the very beginning from getting to this wild thing that you began to observe. And, and now that we've made crows into these sweet beings, if you could please just talk a little bit about what you found out about what happens at, I think it was what, 5% or 4% of crow funerals. Yeah. So this is great too, because this is the, this folds in perfectly actually to the

conversation we were just having. So yeah, so let's return back to the conversation we had in the beginning. So crows, when they see dead crow, they freak out. Other crows that they come to the area, they freak out for like 15 minutes, then they all leave. That's generally what we see. Yes. So my, my original experiment that you asked me about at the top of the show

was looking at why that might be. So to test that, we would feed them for three days to get them used to coming down to a particular area. Um, oh, because, and I had started to go into this, there's, there is a lot of ways we could explain this. So maybe it's like, you know, a way that they figure out like, Oh, so-and-so died. I guess that means their mates available or like, Oh, I get to move up the hierarchy because they were more dominant.

Yeah. So that's one reason. Maybe they're really sad. Maybe they're expressing grief. That's another reason. Uh, and then another reason could be that it's tied to danger learning and avoidance. It's a way that they're like, Oh, a crow died.

I want to make sure I don't get dead. So I'm going to, you know, forget. So that was, uh, among all of our different hypotheses for how we could explain this behavior. And of course I should caveat that with these, these things are not mutually exclusive, but as a science experiment, right? You're going to pick something very narrow. And danger learning and avoidance was the most feasible, one of those

questions to test. Yeah. So we looked at two things. We looked at if they were learning about whether the place is dangerous and about whether they could learn new predators based on their proximity to dead crows. Right. So we would feed crows for three days, get them used to come into a place.

Then we would introduce our dangerous element. We tested a variety of things, but I'll, I'll leave most of them out for this conversation. Um, and so the main one was we had a mass person holding a dead crowd and they would stand there. Let me stop you there. Momentarily, these are not just no, you can't just skip over the masks. Can you talk about these masks?

These masks are terrifying. So the, um, the original facial recognition study that we talked about that my PI John did, uh, used, uh, in the beginning, the, the pictures that most people see are of either the Dick Cheney mask or the caveman mask. Right. Um, but from a scientific standpoint, there was a little bit of criticism over those masks because they're so, um, they're such caricatures, right?

They're very, uh, exaggerated. Right. So in response to that, also what if crows just are naturally political and they don't like Dick Cheney, you know, which naturally, of course they are. Um, so to, to, uh, address that criticism, what we had, what John did was he actually had costume makers come in and take molds of people's actual faces. And then they turned them into latex masks, which means that it really looks like you've like cut someone's face off.

Yeah. Just like popped it on your pure Texas chainsaw massacre. You've got the stringy hair because it's, you know, kind of like, it's bad. And what are they holding? What are they holding in their hands? And then they're holding this dead crow. So literally the worst, like the thing that, that you don't want to see in your yard. Like if you're making like the top three things you wouldn't want to see standing

in your yard, one of them would be a guy and or gal in a creepy mask holding a dead crow and that's what you did in my defense. We didn't do it in people's yards, but we did do it in front of people's houses. And yes, we did have to deal with police, not infrequently. So, okay. So that's the experiment. And, uh, so the persons that are holding the dead crow and then they leave and then we keep feeding the birds for three days.

And then after a week, that person comes back. So that masked figure comes back and now they're not holding a dead crow. So the two questions we're looking for is, so we had those first three days where we're feeding them, we would gauge how long it took them to come down to the food and compare that to the three days after this scary event. And that was going to address this idea of whether or not they were learning that a place that had been associated at one time with a dead crow, if they're going to be wary in that place or avoid it altogether.

And what we found is they do show a statistically significant weariness where before they were like, Cheetos and peanuts, I'm coming down to the food right away. And now they're like, yikes, I really want those Cheetos, but I'm going to like wait like 15 minutes before I like come down and get them. And when that person who they had previously seen holding the dead crow came back without it, they flipped out. They were like, you, you were here last week and they would do, do their whole scolding thing.

Wow. So that was the very first experiment. I'm sorry. Also, also didn't they tell like crows that had not directly encountered the mask where we're also wary? Is that, did I miss that was, we didn't look at that specifically in my study, but that was a big part of the original facial recognition study. Yeah.

And that is, yes. So that, that social learning, watching crows freak out about people and being like, I don't know what they did, but I guess they're nasty. I'm going to freak out whenever I see them now too. Definitely happens. And it happens both horizontally, meaning that within the same generation of birds and vertically, where we see offspring of adults that had this experience, experience also learning that.

And I, and I want to be clear cause this is a really common misconception as people take that and they're like, oh, the parents like told their kids about it and don't, it doesn't seem like that's what's happening. It's just this, um, when the adults are, when that person is there and the adults are freaking out, they're younger coming in and other birds, their age are coming in and they're modeling, they're seeing this behavior mild. And that's how we think that the, could it be epigenetic? Do you, could it, could there be some, you know, I, I don't, I just, I, you

know, that study they did with it, I guess cherry blossoms and mice. Do you know about that? Oh, anyway, so probably, yeah, it makes more sense that they just, you see your parents freaking out and you're going to freak out for sure. That's just the best explanation we have. So anyway, so yeah, that was part of the first study. And so with, with my study, looking at the funerals, the conclusions were danger learning and avoidance, at least in part, definitely drives this

interest that they have in dead crows, because they learn that places are bad. And they learn that things associated with dead crows, that they're probably dangerous and we should alarm call. But okay, so that was the first study. And we were like, all right, so that's why I say, like, generally speaking, what we saw was that, you know, behavior described dead crow, one comes in, freaks out, others join. So moving forward out of that experiment, if you ask me what crows do

around they're dead, that's the only answer I would have for you. But from there, we were like, well, there's lots of other interesting questions we could ask. Like, for example, if this really is driven by danger learning, we would expect that crows will respond more strongly to dead adult crows than they do to dead juvenile crows, because baby crows get killed by a lot of things that adult crows know how to avoid. So finding one of them dead is, you know, in terms of a signal of danger,

it's not a very strong signal. But a adult crow, their survivorship is about 80%. They're tough to kill. So if you find one of those dead, something really bad in the area. And they live to be 20. They live for two decades, potentially. In the, potentially, generally in the wild, though, it's between 14 and 17 years. Still a long time.

Still a very long time, yeah. So for that experiment, we were just, we didn't have masked people or any of the other elements, the dangerous elements that were part of that original study, we just were putting dead adult crows or dead juvenile crows on a sidewalk in a pairs territory and trying to see, like, which one evokes a bigger response. Dr. Swift, just so we can get this out of the way, because people hear that and are like, well, have you been killing crows?

Will you tell everyone where you were getting the bodies? Just so you understand. So the University of Washington has a natural history museum and they, and we have licenses. So I should say we have licenses from Fish and Wildlife for all of the bodies that we get, but anyways, so does the natural history museum. And they get lots of donations by people who find dead crows, maybe because they flew into a window where they were struck by a car.

And there's only so much that that museum can do with all of those crows. So they have some of them reserved for research projects. So basically, all of our crows were birds that were killed accidentally or naturally, and were then donated by the general public. Cool. So yeah, so that's how that experiment ran. And so we would just put crows out on the sidewalk and watch what they do. And of course, when I started that experiment, I was like, all right,

they're just going to like call in the trees and do their things. But that's not what I found. So in the beginning part of the breeding season, which is basically May, or excuse me, mid-March through May, about 5% of the time, and we had done a little less than 300 experiments. And about 5% of those, what we found is that in addition to those other behaviors, the crows will sometimes come down and get a little sexy around the dead crows. And that means that maybe they like do their little sexy posturing or

they just straight up have sex with the dead crow. And that could be coupled, that could just happen in isolation. It could be coupled with them being like, and now I'm going to rip you to shreds. Other crows may come and the aggression actually is a more common thing than the sexual behavior where they see a dead crow and they're like, I'm going to rip your frickin' head off, and then they do. And so, so I just, just to make it crystal clear, you started seeing that sometimes crows fuck dead crows.

Correct. And you, and probably the first time you saw it, did you think this is just, you know, this is just a crazy crow. It's an anomalous freak crow. Yeah, no, it's, that, that was absolutely what I thought. And it, it was funny. Actually, the very first time we saw it was when we were filming something for like Good Morning America, I think, and we had, we had Gabby Mann,

who was the little girl that got, that is the one that made big headlines in the BBC because she gets tons, she got tons of gifts from the crows. Yes. So it was like, just the work, we're just, we're just, it wasn't live, it wasn't live. And they did not use the footage, but yeah, if it wasn't live, I'm surprised a crow didn't try to have sex with it. Sorry, dumb joke. So you have a, you have this wonderful kid who's got this beautiful

assortment of crow gifts. You've got Good Morning America up until that point, in your mind, as a scientist, you have a connection to crows, but then you've, you've, you know, recognized at least they make lonely people a little less lonely. So suddenly you're having to deal with like so many things happening at once. Did you, what was crossing your mind when you were witnessing this? Well, I was just, I don't know, shock. I mean, I had never heard of this behavior in crows, for sure.

And at that time, I didn't actually realize how prevalent it was in other intelligent social species as well. So I was just like, what is happening? Right. Just totally taken aback. And yeah, like you said, I mean, I guess we were just like, is this a mistake? Is it confused? Is it a mistake of some kind?

So that ended up spinning off into its own separate experiment, which is published and people can read about. Where we looked, we did that like, okay, we're gonna put out our like dead crows, right, where they're on their bellies and their wings are out. They look very dead and we're gonna put out live crow mounts. So these taxidermied crows that don't move, but they look living and they have glass eyes and kind of see like, are they just screwing it up? Or what is happening?

And we found that there really wasn't any difference in terms of their sexual behavior between the two, but they, they're sculled just like they do in our, you know, at other times of year around dead crows in a way that they didn't towards these lifelike crows. So they do, they get that it's dead. I mean, they are responding with a certain degree of alarm consistently, even if then they go and they try and have sex with or, you know, annihilate these bodies. Dear God, and that's just, that's where we suddenly, that's where you just can't

apply your human understanding of things to these creatures. Because from our perspective, that is not, that's just not what you do when you see a dead body. You just don't start having sex with them. For most people. Yeah. For most people, good point. Good point.

But, but this, did you, is it possible that as you were saying these crows, their language seems to be very, like based on their situation? And is there some possibility that the crow, they, the crows are somehow aware that there's an experiment happening, that they're being observed, that could this have some correlation to it, the crow's sense of being observed? And they just want to like freak out the thing, observing it? Is there any, is there been any research into that? Like, is this, if you, if anyone figured out a way to like do this with, I don't

know, cameras and no people to see if there's some connection to humans being around? No one has looked at that. And, you know, I think we can't rule out that possibility. I think it's extremely unlikely. But, yeah, I guess I can't, I can't tell you for sure. If, yeah, maybe they're just being extra, like meta about it and. It's an aggro move. It's like, oh, really?

You're going to bring a dead body around? You're going to bring a dead body instead of peanuts? Let me show you what we do with that. Let me show you what happens. I'm going to permanently burn into your mind something that should only be reserved for souls in the lowest pits of hell to see. Cause when you see these YouTube videos, this is insane. They're not, they're like going at it.

And then they're also another, the one I saw that you have on your channel, right? This is on your, you have videos of this. What's your YouTube channel, by the way? It's just my name, Kaylee Swift. There's the crow starts humping, humping a crow that's humping the dead body. Yeah. Oh, they have like three ways with their mates, but I should say in more seriously, the best evidence that we have that that's not what's going on, just based based on

not testing it explicitly is that this behavior is so seasonally limited. Right. If this was a thing happening consistently all year, then maybe they're screwing with us, but it seems extremely unlikely that they're like, I want to screw with you, but only for this really specific time of the year, the rest of the time I'm too busy. Gotcha. Gotcha.

And the coincidence with it being with the breeding season where they are really hopped up on hormones and we're seeing lots of other behavioral changes. The most simple explanation is that it probably has something to do with the, that those onset of all of those reproductive hormones that they're experiencing that's maybe kind of overpowering for, for a minority of individuals, it's sort of overpowering their prefrontal cortex, their decision making part of their brain. The reptilian brain is taking over and they're like, this is the fucking time

of year and I'm going to fuck. Yeah, they're horny. They're just horny crows and they're, and they're aggressive, right? Because they do, they do, they'll kill each other over their territories. And so you have, so this dead crow is basically this really complex stimulus where it's something bad has happened. So that's like alarming, but then like, I'm trying to screw anything that I can because even though crows are, they, they form permanent pair of bonds.

They're what we call socially monogamous. So they're together year round. They reinforce those bonds really consistently. But when we look at the genetics of their offspring, it's clear. There's a lot of other, they're mating with other birds. They cheat. So we know they cheat. So they're like, they see a crow and they're like, you're dead.

I'm alarmed, but I'm also trying to reproduce with, you know, other crows if I can, but also you shouldn't be on my territory because you might be trying to, if it's a male crow having this conversation in its head, you might be trying to mate with my partner and I want to get you out of here. And you have all of these things happening at once. And clearly most crows can process all of that effectively and ultimately just respond with like, uh-oh, dead crow. But some crows are like, oh, this is information overload.

And they just kind of like explode with all of these different behaviors. Unbelievable. The life, the day in the life of a crow, you, you, you know, in the morning, you go and you bring a key chain to your little girl who's been giving you peanuts. A few hours later, you're humping a dead crow. And then that night you're hanging out with your friends after an interesting day. But, you know, a necrophilia aside, I still love crows, but I must admit my heart dropped. You should love them because of the necrophilia.

It's so weird and just so your listeners know we've seen those behaviors really commonly in dolphins. We've seen them in chimpanzees rarely, but it has been seen in elephants. So this isn't like totally weird random thing that crows do. This seems to be a feature of how a lot of animals that form and humans that form really strong social bonds that we know cognitively are very advanced. This, they do that. So, so this isn't just like crows being weird in morbid.

This is not all that uncommon. Dr. Swift, thank you so much for your time today. This is such a mind blowing conversation and your research is so wonderful. And also, you're a great writer. I really love your blog, your ability to communicate some of these ideas in a not such a scientific way, but still a nice balanced articulation of the animal kingdom is really wonderful. Could you please tell the listeners of the listeners?

Can you tell folks where to find you? Yeah, and thank you so much for those really nice things you just said. I appreciate them a lot. So my identity online is basically Corvid Research. And you can find me on almost every platform at that handle. So my blog is Corvid research blog. You can find me at Twitter on Instagram. YouTube, like we talked about, is Kaley Swift, but then Facebook.

It's also Corvid Research. And I'll plug if viewers. Enjoy this, then please like follow me. And I just like talk about crows all the time, among some other things. But if your goal, if you're like, I don't know, but I just kind of want to like maybe just learn a little bit every Wednesday, I play a game called hashtag crow or no. And I play it on all three of those platforms, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, where I post a picture of something and you have to

decide if it's a crow or not. And at the end of the game, I tell you. And so we can actually play this game right now. I'd love to. So the bird that you have on your green screen. Oh, no. Is that a crow or no? It's not.

It's not. What is it? The poster. What is it? It's a rook, which rooks are in the same genus as crows and ravens. And they're in the same family to Corviday. But the way that you can tell that it's a rook is see how at the base of its bill, it's like really chalky.

Yes, I just noticed that versus the two crows in the foreground. They have all those feathers on top of their bills. Yes. So so rooks are more than other crows or ravens are very insectivorious. So they spend a lot of time probing the ground. So when they're young, I think I can't remember. I think it's like 14 months for the first like a little over a year. They have feathers on their bills, just like crows and ravens do.

But once they go through their first adult malt, they lose them. And we think it's because they spend so much time probing for invertebrates that that keeps those feathers from getting all messed up. So very interesting. Wow, well, I got tricked by a rook also. And maybe for another podcast, if you'll ever come on again, we could talk about the Caledonian tool using crows. Oh my gosh, there's so much that we could have covered.

I know it goes on forever. They're so amazing. They're amazing. We got the broad strokes here that we know about the kind of about their language, the emotional life of crows. And that sometimes they just, you know, they hump dead, dead, dead crows. And maybe next time we can jump into tool, the tool use of crows, because I'm really interested in that.

And good luck with your current research. I can't wait to hear what you find out. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great, wonderful weekend, Dr. Swift, and I hope that we cross paths and talk again soon. I hope we do too. That was Dr.

Kaylee Swift, everybody. Make sure you follow her on Twitter. Check out corvidresearch.blog. All the links you need to get to her will be at dunkatrustle.com. Thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. And thank you for listening. We'll be back real soon with a conversation with author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg.

Until then, Hare Krishna. We are family. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington,

Stafford, and Jay Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store. And we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. At Lowe's, we know you can get the job done faster

if you don't have to stop and come into the store all the time. That's why we've updated our app with your business in mind. With the app, you can build quotes, easily reorder your supplies, track orders, and much more. So you can get everything you need right away, stay on the job, finish it, and get started on the next one. Download the app today because Lowe's knows time is money. Lowe's knows pros.