Ologies with Alie Ward - Corvid Thanatology (CROW FUNERALS) with Kaeli Swift

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

Crows have funerals? CROWS HAVE FUNERALS. The inky black bird with the big brain warns and maybe mourns around their fallen friends and Dr. Kaeli Swift is here to tell us all about it. As an avid wildlife researcher and corvid specialist, she's observed death behaviors that will shock you to your bones and ruffle your hackles -- while somehow also making you cry about peanuts. Also: so much inspiration to keep being yourself and to work hard toward what you love. She is a hero. Dr. Kaeli Swift's Blog, YouTube, Twitter & InstagramBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter or InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter or InstagramMore links at www.alieward.comSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hi. It's that old guy, sitting on a shabby, chic couch in anthropology, waiting for his daughter to try on pants that cost too much. Alleyward. Back for another episode of Allergies, a spooky episode of Allergies, a scary episode. Okay, fine. But does it get Gothar than the inky blue sheen of a crow in the shadows? Who also happens to be having a funeral for another crow?

Nothing is more Goth than that. Nothing. Not a spider listening to Bauhaus on vinyl, a bat smoking a clove at a warehouse party is not as Goth as a crow funeral. And I've been sitting on this episode since July. I've been waiting to air it this week. I've been just building with nausea. I'm so excited to talk about Corvid Thanatology, freaking crow funerals.

But first, I will talk quickly as I tell you things that also matter. Okay, thank you to patrons at patreon.com. Thanks to everyone for buying cool stuff at olergiesmerch.com. And thanks for subscribing to and rating the podcast, especially for reviewing it, which helps get it seen by other people. And each week to prove that your reviews mean so much, I read you a fresh one. And this week, I creeped on Sirius Beatles, who wrote, I have been experiencing an odd twilight zone effect where shortly after listening to one of your shows, a moment in my life

was so much richer from a thing I learned there. For just one example, snails. I met a tiny pack of wet sidewalk snails as I crouched intensely over their little googly eyes. I was overcome by an appreciation of their love darts, tiny hermaphroditic bodies, beauty products from their M-word, and French immigrant past. So much, I cried. Sirius Beatles, that rules.

Thank you for letting me creep your review. Okay, Corvid Thanatology. What the fuck word? Crow funerals? Yes. You're about to listen to an hour long interview about the grieving behaviors of crows from one of my favorite alive scientists on the planet. It's so good.

She's so good. Okay, so Corbids, quick background, belong to a group of perching birds with a developed focal organ. That's what makes a Corbid. Sometimes these birds are called songbirds, but apparently ornithologists have gotten into like almost fistfights about the term songbirds. So which birds are Corbids? Okay, they include crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, trepies, chuffs, and nutcrackers,

which kind of sounds like an Alice in Wonderland chess set or a roll call of gnomes, perhaps a menu of local draft beers from Portland. But it's a real list. I just read verbatim just to make sure that I don't get any wrong and cause any more ornithological fisticuffs. Anyway, we're talking about crows and how they die. So you're going to hear about why crows have this death laden reputation and some unsettling science mask facts.

And we'll hear about desperate alarm calls and feeling like an outsider and how brains work and radioactive tracers and murders, but not the sad kind and plague doctors and all kinds of dark goodness that will have you sitting on a park bench staring into the treetops with this new found fascination. And to hear the bonkers tales of biologist and Corvid banatologist Kaylee Swift. I'm so excited to talk to you. So here's this. There's your microphone.

Here's mine. First thing that I always do is just ask people to pronounce their first and last name just to make sure that I say it right. Sure. Kaylee Swift. Okay. Just checking. I believe he was pronounced it though.

I think it's doctor Kaylee Swift. This is where I just lose my shit about it. I mean, how long have you been a doctor like? Like 48 hours. Oh my God. No, maybe 72. That's. Since Friday night at 9.30.

Oh my God. Tell me everything. It has been a whirlwind sprint. I did two degrees in six years. Oh my God. So it was really fast. So doctor Kaylee Swift got her master's in science in animal behavior and neuroethology. I think that's how the brain affects what animals do.

I think that's what that means. At the University of Washington in 2015. And then she launched straight into getting her PhD. She completed her research about crow death behaviors in just over three years. She defended her PhD on the last night possible before the end of the quarter. Like her dissertation was due by midnight that day. And this breakneck pace was partly because there was a post-doctorate position in Denali that started right after she wanted to be able to hop over and do that work.

Also, the first time she mentioned she was moving to Denali for a while. I asked if she had to get a lot of travel vaccines. And then I realized that Denali is a park in Alaska and not a small island in the malaria belt. Anyway, she's very smart and hardworking and she busted proverbial ass for that PhD. You're not usually under the gun like that. Like how'd you deal with it? I cried a lot.

Yeah, I had a few moments where I was just like, oh, this is impossible. So I did that. I reached out to my peers and said, I need you to text me and tell me I'm going to do this and everything's going to be okay. And they did it because they were wonderful. And I worked really hard. So it was kind of a combination of those three things. Okay.

So now tell me what it was about crows that made you so interested. And when did you start really studying them? Did you always sit in parks and high school and stuff and just gaze at crows or was there a moment? No, there was definitely a moment. So I, since I was a little kid, loved animals and always really gravitated towards science. I could stare at bugs all day. I just thought they were so cool.

I'm with you. Yeah. And I could look at pictures of bugs and books and read about them. But I wasn't, you know, I wasn't like journaling as a little kid or taking fastidious notes. But then as I got older, you know, in high school, I was sort of like, but as I went into college, I had circled back around to wanting to do wildlife sciences or animal behavior more broadly. And I didn't really have a preference or an idea of what exactly that would look like.

And I had, in thinking about what kinds of questions really interested me, the answer I kept coming back to was this idea of the social intelligence hypothesis, which is this idea that being social and having these complex social lives may have really driven our cognitive advances because it's difficult to do that. It takes a lot of brain power. And that question and, you know, there's lots of nuanced ways that you can look at that. That has always really captivated me. And so reading Mind of the Raven and being like, hmm, I like birds.

I like animal behavior and cognition. Oh, look at this. There's this whole group of birds that now, you know, scientists collectively saying like, oh, wow, I guess we were super wrong about the capabilities of birds. Like, look at what Gres and Ravens can do. Did they have to issue an apology to birds at some point? Like, fuck, man, we're sorry. You got great brains.

You're doing games over here. Like, was there a moment in time culturally where we were like, we're so sorry birds? I don't know if that has happened, but if it hasn't, it really should. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things I've experienced through my research is still a lot of people don't really realize that. And that's been one of the most rewarding things about doing my work is seeing people go,

wow, I had no idea that they did this. That's so cool. I like crows more now. So that's been, like I said, just one of the most rewarding parts of the research that I've done. Uh, so yeah. So the marriage of all of those things, birds and intelligence and animal behavior, is what led me to crows. And then really serendipitously, my undergraduate advisor at the time I was going through this

revelation happened to be working on the facial recognition publication with one John Marsliff. Who's like the dude when it comes to wearing creepy masks around crows? Yes. Yeah. It's like, you know, a handful of crow experts in the United States and he is one of them. And so it was like, oh, this worked out nicely. I mean, I feel like in your research, were you to Google you, were someone to Google you? I feel like photos of you wearing a ghastly mask with like a Halloween mask that someone had left

in their trunk for several years. And, but there's you holding a dead crow with the mask on. I have so many questions. So really quick, Dr. John Marsliff, professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington, was Kaylee's PhD advisor. And he's been studying crows for years. You may be familiar with his research in wearing certain masks around crows, which showed that hell yes, they very much identify human faces and they will squawk up a storm.

This is technically called scolding when they see a foe. Kind of like we see in human beings at a professional wrestling match or an episode of the Real Housewives, which let's face it, those two scenarios are just two sides of the same coin. So for example, if a researcher trapped a crow for observation wearing a certain mask, most of the local crows in the future will freak out if someone casually walks by them in the same mask. Human beings might also freak out that they didn't study.

But they started using this ghastly crow magnet mask and a Dick Cheney Halloween one, but ended up in the end employing some specially made masks later in the study, which I'll be honest, are kind of creepier because they're like someone's face, but just a little bit off. So imagine like Michael Myers with shoulder length hair standing in a park and writing down everything he did on a clipboard. But before we get to all of that work specifically, let's throw this thing in reverse for a second. Okay, I'm going to start basics.

I'm going to go back a little bit. Difference between a crow and a raven. And why do you study crows and not ravens? I'm sorry, I don't know this. I think ravens are bigger. No, don't apologize at all. It's a really common question. And why would you know this unless you'd asked somebody earlier?

So crows and ravens are different species, but they're in the same genus. So like a lion and a tiger. Okay, but they're really superficially similar looking. So it's easy to mix them up. So the main things to look for is ravens are about two and a half times the size of a crow. Okay. So I always tell people if you're like out and you see a crow and you go, that is the biggest bleep, bleep, bleep crow I've ever seen.

It's probably because it's a raven. In flight, the easiest way to tell them apart is crows have more sort of squared tails versus ravens have this really distinct wedge shaped tail. And then if you are close enough to see one or see a picture of one, you'll notice that the throat feathers on a raven are really textured like a beard versus crows have really smooth hair like throat feathers. And on a raven, we call those special feathers hackles. And they articulate them and use them in a lot of visual behavioral displays.

But once you get a look at a few photos, that feature becomes really easy to detect. So those are sort of the three big physical ones. Their voices are really different. How are their voices different? So crows do the classic, you know, caw. And ravens have this much deeper, more hollow croak sound. Nevermore. Yeah, it's a very, and ravens, both, both species make a huge diversity of really cool noises.

But personally, I think the vocal repertoires of ravens are cooler than they are for crows. Don't tell the crows I said that. Crows are like, she just defended, got her PhD and now she's throwing us under the bus. Twitter. Can ravens make voices? Crows, ravens, and magpies are excellent, excellent mimics. Yes, they're essentially parrots. Crazy.

Not maybe not quite the, in terms of the volume of their vocabulary, but their accuracy to the human voice. Outstanding. Crazy. Yeah. Who is creepier or more goth? Crows or ravens? I would say ravens because they have more of a habit of plucking eyes out of living things.

Oh, god. Crows will do that too. But I think ravens have more of that reputation. It's pretty hardcore. Yeah. Well, I'm, you know, that's skin is thick. The million skin is thick. So if you're hungry, I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna go for the easy part.

Get the good stuff. Yeah. It's very Marilyn Manson. Man, that is Halloweeny is all get out. So when Kaylee got to graduate school, she started looking into projects that involved these complex, fascinating big bird brains. John had already started to do some studies with the functional imaging work that we do, where we look at crow brains.

And he had already been inspired doing that. Like, oh, it would be really cool if we would show them a dead crow. Because humans for a long time have known that crows respond really strongly to their dead. This is that idea is not something that I contributed to humankind. And so, so he thought that that would be cool, but in order to do that, you really need to have this field component so that you can, you know, say, like, this is what they do in their normal environment. This is the external manifestation of, of their behavior.

And then we can look inside their brain and then try and tell the whole story. So their research involves observing the burbs in their natural home externally from afar. And then after that, they're like, hey, hey, burbs, come take a quick science vacation with us just a few weeks. We'll look at your brain function before releasing you again into the wild to tell some pretty great alien abduction stories at your next crow party. And so we talked about that a lot. And the advantages of that project were one, that it's awesome.

Two, it was feasible financially because, you know, I didn't need expensive tracking devices or tags or anything like that. So it was it was low cost, which was important because I had zero funding. I had gotten an amazing fellowship from NSF to support me personally through three years of graduate school, but it didn't include any research funds. And he didn't have any research funds for me. Those masks aren't free, man. Well, so fortunately, the masks had already been bought and secured before the previous facial

recognition study. Yeah. So I'm just trying to make it work with like, what resources are already here? Where do those masks come from? I'm so sorry. Such a dumb question. No, not a dumb question because nobody knows the answers. They had costume makers come and take molds of actual people's faces.

So I always tell people to be gentle when they talk about the masks because Linda and Vivian and Joe are all actually real people. Yeah, they which which are not a scary in real life. I assure you, I'm sure a thousand percent. OK, but that's good to know. And so you were like, I don't have a lot of funding. I have zero funding. And so this idea that instead of tracking and tagging or killing and dissecting the animals,

you're like, we can look at their brain activity using functional MRIs. So not MRIs. We use a process called FDG PET. OK. And the reason that we don't use an MRI is that you could not train a crow to go into an MRI and not have, you know, a meltdown. So they would just say all their brain activity would be panic. Yeah, that's a good point.

So basically what we do is we capture crows in the wild and we have an aviary that's fit to house crows. The housing is is acceptable for a couple months and we give them a few weeks to get acclimated to captivity and just kind of calm down a little bit. And then the night before we're ready to image a subject, we take it into the radiology room and it goes in a smaller cage and we give it overnight to acclimate to that. And then the morning that we're ready to image, we take the bird out and we inject it with something called FDG, which is a modified glucose molecule with a radioactive tracer attached to it.

Oh my gosh. So this is a PET scan like a cancer patient would get. It is exactly the same process. 00:17:52,480 --> 00:17:53,920 My dad had to get a PET scan. So and we had to tell him not to eat carbs for like days before and he was like, this is bullshit. Yeah.

And that's one of the reasons they have to go in overnight is so that then they don't get any food. Basically, the idea of this process is so we give them this glucose injection, your brain uses glucose as it works. Whatever part of your brain is working the hardest is going to use the most glucose. So once we give them this injection, we can show them something like a dead crow or an empty room or the face of a familiar threatening person or a familiar caring person. And whatever their part of their brain is working, working, working to process that

information is going to concentrate that glucose. And the reason I described it as a modified glucose molecule is that it's been changed such that the body can't metabolize it anymore. So it's just going to stick there. And then what happens is after that period where we've shown them the stimulus, which we only have about 15 minutes or so to do that, we can anesthetize the bird and put it in the scanner. And the scanner goes around and it detects where that tracer landed. And we have about a 45 minute window before it starts to degrade.

And then once the scanner is done, we can take the bird out, keep it while it wakes up, and then it's free to go. Okay, bye. Are you showing them pictures of birds that they know so that it's familiar? And they're like, that's my uncle. No, so that was one major caveat with all of the research that I did. We always controlled to make sure that they were unfamiliar birds. And with the pet images, we weren't showing them photographs.

We were showing them actual taxidermy crows. And it was just on a stool in front of the bird. Oh my gosh, so it'd be like, okay, you're going to go to a hotel overnight. In the morning, we're going to take you to the doctor's office. We're going to give you some super weird soft drink that has radio tracers in it. And then we're going to take you in a room with a mummified human being. And then we're going to see what part of your brain lit up. Yeah.

And so what parts of their brains would light up when it was another dead crow or just like a pencil? So I can't talk about that yet. I'm going to keep that close to the vest until I get it approved by my scientific peers to make sure everything is up to snuff. So she's not allowed to say for certain, but she did give me a clue that it's one of the three areas. Perhaps the amygdala, which is an area associated with fear acquisition

or something called the NCL, which is essentially the avian analog to our prefrontal cortex. And it deals with higher cognitive tasks might also however be the hippocampus, which is the little brain nugget responsible for learning and memory. She can't say yet the paper is going to be published sometime next year. I'm earnestly awaiting this like it's Oscar nominees. Okay. So if you're not looking at radioactive tracers in a bird head scan, what are some things you can see with your own human eyes?

Can you give me an overview of some crow morning behaviors for those who have not seen it or haven't read your research? Like what happens when crows see a crow die or fly by and be like, oh, shit, there's a dead one? Like what do they do? So the most common response is that the bird that discovers the body will alarm call and that results in recruitment of other birds to the area to form what we call a mob. So if you've ever seen crows go after an eagle or a red tail hawk or your cat, that that's what mobbing looks like.

Whoa. And that's kind of that's the most common response. But that said, there's a lot of anecdotes of them doing other things. And and John and I get emails all the time from people who we had one woman send us pictures of a crow. She saw it was carrying, I think like a candy wrapper or some kind of food packaging. And it flew up to the dead crow and then it left the wrapper right there by the body. I notice you have died. Here is a Twix. And we've had other people send us photos of dead crows where they the other crows had left

sticks by the body. So that's that's them, you know, the more interesting stuff. I never witnessed anything like that myself in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of trials. She did see one thing is sometimes about a quarter of the time, particularly during the breeding season, they come down and they touch the dead crows in a variety of ways. And it can be it can manifest as just sort of exploratory touching where they sort of gently kind of poke around with their bills. It can be this really aggressive pecking and they'll rip feathers out and pull the wings off and do all kinds of stuff. And then in a really small portion about 4% of the time they are sexual. They will attempt copulation with the dead crows.

But we also saw sexual behaviors manifest in other ways actually, like sometimes they would just walk over to the crows and then solicit, you know, they have this very particular posture when they're getting ready to copulate. Oh, hey, you single. And then the other really interesting thing we saw is sometimes pairs would come in together and be like, Oh my gosh, that's a dead crow. We got to fuck. And they would have sex like immediately. Yeah. And I was, it was, and then something in the most rare cases, one, the pair would come in and these birds aren't marked. So I believe they were a pair based on all of the observations I had done leading into it, but you know, I can't absolutely positively guarantee it. But the first, the bird

they would land on the ground and the one of them would strut over and be like, I'm gonna mate with you. And it would get on top. And then its partner would get on top of that one. And they would have a sex sandwich with the dead crow. Yes. And the first time I saw this, you can just hear me in the video going, Oh my gosh, it's a three way. They're having sex on top with each other on the crow. It's a three way with the dead crow. No. Why are they doing it? Why are you doing that? Yeah. Do they think they're like this will wake them up? Like is that what they're thinking? I think that they are just thinking I am full of sexy hormones right now because it is my breeding season. And there's a thing down here. And I am horny and I'm mad because it's on my territory.

And but I'm also kind of scared because it's dead. And all of those things are happening in me at once. So so. So I'm just going to do all of the things. Maybe maybe they're on the brim of the apocalypse. And this is just the first like patient zero. And they're like, I got to get it in before party's over. Yeah. Yeah. So my God, we can't. Yeah, we don't know yet exactly what is responsible for this behavior. But I am very much under the impression that it's related to the hormonal shifts that they're experiencing in the breeding season. And then probably manifesting as this sort of displacement behavior, which is essentially when animals are confronted with conflicting drives, sometimes they just do this third thing that's totally unrelated. So for example, like

goals, when they're faced with a competitor, and it's kind of like, okay, am I going to go fight with this bird? Or am I going to run away? Like, I don't know, they'll just pull grass because they're like, do I run away? Do I fight? Okay, I don't know. I'm just going to pull grass. Oh, no, that's so confusing. That's like the worst kind of procrastination. Yeah. That's when I have like a bunch of emails due and a bunch of stuff to write. But instead, I just like clean out the silverware drawer. Yeah. Well, at least you're not, you know, fucking dead people. I'm not. Okay, so this episode is about crow funerals. So do they show up in veils? Do they demand to see will and testaments? Do they confess to long term affairs with the dead's best

friend? What are some other ways that crows mourn the dead? I mean, I know that they leave sticks, they might circle and caw. Are there any other things that you have witnessed in the wild that you're like, what? Not really. So one of the things that we've heard is a lot of people were right to us and say, you know, I saw a vigil of crows and they stood around the body for four hours. And I never saw anything like that. Definitely one thing that happens though is they'll come in and they'll scream and all their neighbors would come in. It'll be this really, you know, ruckus thing for about 15 or 20 minutes. So I grabbed that and a few other crow noises for this episode from Dr. Swift's YouTube channel,

which has so many good videos and will be linked via the show notes. She also has some new amazing ones up from her time in the tropical balmy island of Denali. And then they kind of just start to calm down. So it's hard for me to say in those when I get those stories, if what people are saying is just kind of the end of this behavior when the birds have started to be like, okay, well, we made our, you know, we said our thing. Or if when, because you asked earlier, you know, if we're showing them familiar birds and we're not. So if maybe the explanation to some of these other, you know, ritual-like behaviors is that they do slightly different things if it's a bird that they know. And I can't offer an answer to that just

yet. And how smart are crows? Crows are primates, essentially. Really? Yeah. So I mean, not actually, but they're all apart. Someone's gonna be like, no, they're actually monkeys. Did you not know this Allie? God, I don't know. I'm just fine as a communicator. You are. Disclaimer, crows are not actually monkeys. Please do not come at me, fools. Yeah, it's really amazing because the crow brain, the avian brain, but the crow brain is really quite different in a lot of ways than the mammalian brain. And one of the main features that's different is when you close your eyes and you think of a brain, you picture something really folded and squishy, right? Yeah, avian brains don't have those faults. It's totally smooth.

What? So they have managed in that tiny walnut sized package with vastly less surface area to create these systems that do a lot of the same things that primates do. Just to give you some examples, crows or corvids, there's some evidence that they can count, that they have a, you know, that they can, they possess some kind of numerical, you know, quantitative abilities, basically. New Caledonian crows were the first species besides chimpanzees that we discovered make and use tools. And that distinction between make and use is really important in terms of its, you know, cognitive implications. There's a lot of studies that suggest that these birds have theory of mind, which is essentially the capability to be like, I am me and I have my motivations

and you are you and you have different motivations. They seem perceptive to when they're being spied on, for example. Is this because you spied on them? I mean, I have definitely had experiences where it seems, so for example, to do my field work, I always targeted breeding pairs, which means I needed to follow them around and identify their nest because I wanted to control, I didn't want to be right next to their nest for one experiment and 100 meters away for another one. So I wanted to control that distance. So what you're telling me is you were wearing a mask and a wig and you were deliberately following mating couple. So the mask doesn't go on until the experiment starts. So fortunately, because if that had been the case, then I would have never made it out alive.

Do you have you just like lurking behind a tree and you're like in a full thing just like spying on a mating pair is just the best kind of creepy I can possibly think of. It's so good. No. Okay, so no, she was not wearing a mask during this research. I'm sorry. I just I got excited at the visual. But to finish this story, she was following and watching breeding pairs, building nests and I had multiple experiences where I would be following them around watching them carry sticks to their nesting tree. And I'd be like, yes, I found it. Look, I watched them deposit all these sticks there. And then I would like leave and come back and I'd be like, huh, that that pile hasn't changed at all. And I would go and hide and I'd watch them.

And I realized they were actually nesting in a totally different tree. And I 100% think that they were doing it on purpose that they saw me watching them. And we're like, my nest is over here. So so that is one reason. But there was actually a really brilliantly designed study looking at Ravens that more scientifically showed that they are thinking that they're imagining competitors that they can't see, which is so incredible. But yes, the to return to the masks. And I did, I should look at my phone. I mean, I bet I did one of my experiments, like a block from where we are right now. Oh, yeah, I did it all over downtown Seattle, which was hard. It was an adventure because I was working 15 hour days, I was getting into downtown Seattle

like five in the morning with my scary mask. And I saw a lot of stuff. Wait, like at five in the morning in a mask, how many people were so scared of you? It depended. So most people at five in the morning are not scared of a person in a scary mask, is my experience. Most of the people who are out at five see somebody in a mask and they're just kind of like, oh, it's like the three o'clock people who get really scared of the mask person. Did you have a sandwich board or anything that was like so we did. So we eventually got it took a couple of trials before I was like, Oh, we are never going to get through this unless people know. And even then I had I had a woman I was doing a we were doing an experiment at Magnuson Park,

which is this really lovely big park in Seattle. And there's a big play area for kids. And we were out in the parking lot, right? I mean, it's not like we're being inconspicuous. I mean, how can you be right? And we had we had our taxidermied hawk and our crone. I'm standing there. I've got a clipboard and a camera. And my volunteer is helping. And Joel Williams, who was my volunteer for my first couple of years and then became my full time taxidermist, actually, who he is a very, he's a very tall man. He's about six, seven. Oh, my God. And he really likes black and camo, okay, which you know, personal style, no problem. But that combo in a scary mask is not not great. And we had a woman come over and she was like, you are scaring the crap out of my grandkids and

what do you and I look over the kids and they, you know, they just have like totally blank neutral faces. I'm like, okay. And so, you know, I explain, you know, I'm sorry, we're doing this research on crows. I'm happy to talk to them about science. And she's like, I think you're lying. I'm calling the police. No, I was like, okay, that's a elaborate lie. But you, you do you, lady. Did you take the mask off during this exchange or did you keep it on? So I was never the mask where I always had a volunteer do that, fortunately. So she was talking to me, unmasked person. And, and so yes, but there was a time where my volunteer, an officer drove up to one of my volunteers in the mask and made her take it off because there had just been a bank robbery.

Oh, no, like the day before a masked bank robbery. So we had lots of adventures like that. And it's, you know, it's, it's one of those things where these stories can often be because they panned out, you know, it was never a problem can be funny to tell. But it's always, you know, there's this flinch of pain when I do so because I recognize how incredibly privileged I am that that the stories always ended up being fine. And the police were like, we believe you have a good day. You know, and, and I have to recognize that there are so many people that could not have done this work safely. And that, you know, there was a lot of, in terms of their interactions with, with the police and with the general community, because another part of what I was doing with

this nest searching is walking around neighborhoods with binoculars, looking into people's yards. So I had to deal with the police or just with the general public a lot. And, you know, most of the time people were like, oh, crows, I have to tell you this story about this crone. And it ended up being wonderful. But, you know, there's a certain percentage of the population that just is not ever going to be cool with you just voitering in front of their house in any capacity, but especially with binoculars. But you're like, I'm a white lady just here with some binoculars, everyone's like, cool, have fun. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, you know, it was that sex. It was good that we were able to do the research, but the broader cultural implications

of that sucks, because this research is freaking cool. And every kind of person should be able to do this research safely. I love her. And now what is your background when it comes to STEM? I saw you tweet something yesterday that got like 5,000 retweets already about a little bit about your background and your lead up to getting your PhD that maybe this wasn't a career that you would have expected or people would have expected of you. Yeah. So I mentioned earlier when I was a kid that I loved that I could just stare at bugs all day and I did. And teachers would be like, Kaley, we need to learn about division right now. And I was like, division, that's a street in downtown Spokane. And I, yeah, I had a really hard time in school

when I was in grade school. And it kind of, the culminating moment was we had an art project in third grade. And we had those little like pinnacle flags, you know, the triangle flags. And I had the wide end on the right hand side and the narrow end on the left hand side. And to me, it made so much sense that the first letter of your name should start at the wide end. And then it should go as it gets smaller. And so I wrote my whole name backwards on it. That's just made so much sense to me that that's how you would do it. And my teachers were like, yeah, we can't deal with this. So they, they, we had a very intense parent-teacher meeting where they were like, we're going to hold Kaley back because she cannot read and she's dyslexic.

And I was like, no, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. So I went to a, I switched to a school that had a program for kids with who were behind basically who had all kinds of different learning disabilities. And yeah, and then I worked up until basically eighth grade. I was failing classes regularly. I was medicated for a little while and I hated it. And so I told my parents like, I have to get off this medication. Like I will figure out how to make this work. And for a couple years, I didn't. I was unmedicated and I was failing my classes. Was it like an ADHD kind of? Ritalin. Yeah, yeah. And I went to child therapists and, you know, like learning therapists and, and it was, it was really hard. And I, I cried and just, I can remember coming home from school

regularly feeling like this was every day was just the worst day ever. Because there was a lot of, you know, shame coming from my, I mean, I had close friends, but there was a lot of shame from other kids, you know, because you're going to the, to the class with the kids who were behind and like little kids are just not always nice about that. And I just, I didn't understand why this was so hard. You know, I was looking around. It was so easy for so many of my peers. And I just could not understand these words in front of me or how I was supposed to just sit in a classroom for five hours and not just think about, you know, bugs and wolves and stuff. Um, and then I moved in eighth, right before eighth grade, we moved from Seattle or excuse

me from Spokane to Seattle and I switched schools again. And the level that my new school was at was essentially a year behind where the school I had been at was. So I kind of got to repeat the same grade actually without being held back. And something in that eighth grade year just sort of started to click. And I had figured out tools for, for developing really good time management. And then kind of after that, things started to settle into place and school became a little bit easier for me. And now, you know, I still, you can see it in my tweets, like I'm a terrible speller. I make mistakes all the time. I've never noticed. I'm always like, how do you do it? Cause I'm like, you're getting your PhD, your tweets are fire. You've got this like super comprehensive

blog. You're getting published in papers. I'm like, what kind of time management does this woman have? It's astounding. Yeah. So, and that is one skill that I, I can say that I definitely have and have worked really, really hard to make work for myself. Um, so, so yeah, so that was, you know, kind of the story, but there were definitely, I mean, there were so many moments in my life where I was like, I'm never going to exceed and succeed, excuse me, in school. Like I'm just, I'm not, I'm just different from these other children. And even when I applied to college, I can remember going to certain colleges to, you know, the admissions office and having people be like, uh, don't waste your time. You are not going to get in here. Oh my God. And just being like,

well, and now you're doctor and now I'm a doctor and I got an NSF grant. So screw you. There are many ways to succeed. And yeah, so that's been, that's been just tremendously amazing. And I'm so, you know, happy to, to share that story and remind people that it is painful and it is a lot of work, but people figure, you know, people figured out if you support them, if you give them tools and try new things, you know, it is possible for people to make, to figure out how to make it work within this system that's really designed for a very particular type of learner. Do you think that you developed a lot of empathy that made you more interested in like animal

behavior? Do you think empathy is, is part of what you do observing behavior? That's a great question. I mean, I, maybe I consider myself an incredibly empathetic person, but I think for me, the draw to animals was that animals are so non-judgmental, right? They're like, oh, fuck my dad brother. And they just, they do their thing and I could watch them from afar and they're beautiful and interesting. And, and so it was just such a nice escape from the classroom where I just felt like shit all the time. So, so I think that was, that was mainly what drew me to wildlife. That's interesting. I had never thought about it that way. But, but yeah, I think that when, when you struggle yourself with filters and how to be and

how to assimilate and how to be the person people want you to be versus what you want to be or what you struggle with, like, yeah, you look at animals and it's like, I'll sit here in front of you, I'll make eye contact and then like my butthole. You really get to kind of see the nature being so unfiltered. And I think that is kind of a relief. And I think the, the patterns in animals can be a little bit easier to detect for some people than the patterns in human beings, because humans are so complicated. And how has working in Corvid Thanatology changed maybe your relation to mortality or morning practices? I'm hoping that you haven't had to interface with any like human funerals, but do you find yourself looking at it differently?

I know that's such a good question. And I don't have a great answer for that so far because no, I mean, I have gone through funerals. But for people for whom death was the conclusion of a very well lived long life and not a surprise. And I often wonder if the reason for that that there hasn't been this translation between what I do as a scientist with death and then my perspective personally is because unlike something like a primate or or a cetacean like a whale, you know, crows in some ways aren't incredibly human like. And I wonder if I was studying primates, if I would have more of that experience than I have, than I have had studying crows. And I'm not sure of the answer to that. But I feel like we need to have louder, more raucous funerals, maybe

let people scream if they want to. Yeah. Yeah. Someone over there is making out, getting a third base. I don't know. You're like, morning in all ways. Can we do a quick rapid fire round? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now these are. Yeah, tell me how this works. Questions from listeners. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors, why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where oligies gives our money, you can go to alleyword.com and look for the tab, oligies gives back. There's like 150 different charities that we've given to already with more every single week. So if you need a

place to go donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure where to go, those are all picked by oligists who work in those fields. And this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thanks sponsors. Okay. Your questions. So these are from patrons, from the Patreon page. Sarah Preston first comment just said, how weird and amazing. No question. Okay. Agreed. Gary Jungling says, yes, do crows wear black to their funerals? Oh, never mind. Answered my own question. Look at these jokers right off your back. I didn't screen these, I had time in there and then I'm finding it delightful. Dane Godding asks, have birds ever been observed using bones of other birds to build their nests? So I have, to my knowledge,

there's no bird that like builds a nest primarily out of bones. But I do have an example of a raven where the nestling died. And so the parents just shoved it into the side of the nest on the exterior, not even on the interior. It's not like they just scooted out of the way. They like took it out of the nest and they just shoved it into the side of it. So does that answer your question? Oh my God. Can you imagine? It's just like, well, the baby died. Yeah. Well, we got a hole in the side of the house anyway. Wow, that's rough. Yeah. They're like, we didn't like it anyway. Jasmine Wells wants to know, okay, only kind of about bird death, but kind of not. Why is a group of crows called a murderer? And do they ever murder each other?

Great question. So an FYI raven, a group of ravens is often called an unkindness. Both of those words are not scientific words. They're totally colloquial. So you'll never hear me see a big group of crows and go, oh, a murder of crows. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought that was just like what we call them, like a parliament of owls. Yeah. Nope. Those are totally just lay terms that you'll never see in academic papers. Wow. Yeah. I know. We're just such wet blankets. But I mean, they seem very, very heavily weighted with people's own kind of subjective. Exactly. And so the origin of those names is probably very closely tied to the relationship that developed between human and crows during the crusades and kind of through the medieval period

where you had a lot of dead bodies. And so you had a lot of scavengers coming to take advantage of those dead bodies. And I think that the feasting on human corpses by corvids for people of that time period is a big part of what sort of cemented this ominous, bad relationship. And then to boot, during the plague, because the smell was so overpowering, the doctors would wear these really black bird-like masks that had like a beak. And they would stuff flowers and other really strong smelling scents in there so they wouldn't pass out from the smell and they looked like these walking ravens. Oh my God. So I think that's really where it comes from. Though interestingly, you know, that's fairly unique to Western cultures in many parts of Asia, like Japan,

for example. These birds aren't signs of evil. They are the birds that hold the most wisdom, actually. So it's important to recognize that our perspective of the cultural implications of these birds, that that is a cultural norm that's not the case globally. Now to answer the question, do they ever murder each other? Totally. Particularly during the breeding season, if they can, they will absolutely kill a territory intruder. And generally, they try and get the bird on the ground, and then they go for the wing joints, and then they go for the head. Oh my God. Yeah, it's really, it's brutal. And part of that is because crows engage in extra pericopulation, so it might be a way to sort of keep that from happening. But yeah, they are

incredibly territorial. During the winter, that's really rare. And these killings, they don't happen very frequently because most of the time the bird can get away. But yes, they will kill each other, and it is very dramatic when it happens because the bird that's the victim produces this really specific distress call. And that is like a magnet for crows, and they all come in, and they'll attack the bird that's being attacked, or sometimes they'll attack the attacker. And the other, a really common myth is that they will execute crows that failed at their job of watchmen, and there's no evidence of that. So wait, there are crows that are watchmen? So like in a group feeding situation, you're always going to have some birds that are more

sentinels, you know, they're on more alert. And any, you know, whenever you see groups of animals feeding in the same place, you'll see these kinds of patterns. And so a lot of people think, you know, if a bird didn't do its job watching out for the group, and a predator comes in that they'll like go and, you know, seek revenge on that bird, and there's no evidence of that. Oh my God. I never heard that. Okay, so Maria Kumer wants to know, what's been the strangest thing you learned so far in your study of this? That they have sex with dead crows. Charlotte Milling wants to know, what is the evolutionary significance of COVID grieving behavior? And if there isn't any, why would it become a thing?

Great question. So I think the answer to that is, and we've been able to demonstrate some aspects of this in our research, that it is a way for them to learn about and avoid danger. And I think that's, you know, probably going to be the crux, the sort of seed of these behaviors in most animals, including ourselves. If you're a social species, and you are capable of the kind of rapid, complex learning that crows and other, you know, primates and cetaceans and humans are capable of, it makes sense that if you see a dead member of your species, you'd be like, Oh, what happened? Like, how do I make sure this doesn't happen to me? And so I really think that that's kind of the foundation of this behavior. And from there, I think it can, and in complement to that, I think

you can include a lot of other motivations too. But I think that's probably the adaptive reason how it starts. That makes sense. Jen Evans had a great question. Do crows react differently to a natural death, old age versus an unnatural death, like an injury or poisoning? Because if they're doing it to learn how not to have it happen, are they like, how do I not get old and die? Like, does that never enter their brains? Great question. And I don't know the answer to that, but that, I mean, that certainly could have been another one of the aspects I looked at, you know, in terms of my graduate studies and it wasn't, but that's one of the next steps I absolutely think that we should take in this line of questioning. For reals, like someone else get on it, pass the mask down. I mean,

you're like, you're on deck. Go to the park with a clipboard. Aki wants to know, do crows visit the burial place of other crows and do they bring offerings to pay their respects? You mentioned that sometimes you see them toss sticks over there? Mostly, I don't know. My suspicion is that once they come in and do their thing, they're not coming back, right? Because that's an energy investment, but it's also could be dangerous, right? I mean, you could have scavengers lurking in that area. And in fact, my research suggests that crows are more wary in the places, the immediate locations where they find dead crows in the days that follow. So my guess would be that, you know, they're not coming in to check those locations, even from afar, once they go through their thing.

And what usually kills crows? Are we talking hawks? We talking babies? It depends on the age class. First year birds, so baby crows, have about a 50% survivorship rate in places like Seattle. And they're getting taken out by things like cars and cats and, you know, window strikes and just lots of stuff. Adult crows have a much higher survivorship, about 80%. And they're getting killed by things like red-tail hawks and eagles and great horned owls. And sometimes they'll kill it, eat part of it, and then just like, peace out? Yeah. Yeah. They're like, I'm done here. That would confuse me, because like, if I order a burrito, I'm finishing the burrito. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but you got to

think like, especially in an urban environment, there's, they're having to contend with a lot of disruptions. So sometimes it's just not worth it because, you know, somebody's walking their dog, like you got to fly up and then you're like, I'm gonna just wait here, I could just go catch another one or maybe I'm full or whatever. Yeah. Little to go boxes. Yeah. Your talents. Can I get this wrapped up? Donatelle Austin wants to know, can you determine the cause of death just by looking or, you know, watching the decomposition of a bird? No, I can't. There are people, there are amazing avian pathologists folks that work for, you know, government agencies whose job it is, that is their whole job is that they get body

sent to them and they have to figure out the cause of death to try and figure out if somebody's doing something, you know, that requires legal action. But I'm not that person. I can look and, you know, feathers have been pulled out. It's clearly a raptor that did it. If the neck is broken and they're by a house, it's probably a window strike. If it's disease, I mean, that can be really hard to detect unless you do a necropsy where you actually cut the bird open. So just looking at it, you can't be like, it died of sadness. No. Just checking. Ariel wants to know, do crows ever engage in cannibalism? That's a yes, right? Yes. So are, it has been observed, but it's really, really rare. So I think, I think a lot of people would guess if they didn't know

much about crows, aside from the fact that these are birds that they see eat a lot of garbage and roadkill, they might guess that they are totally eating dead crows all the time. And it seems like a pretty rare behavior that's more biased towards inexperienced younger birds. Wow. So they're not living up to the murder name? No, necessarily. Interesting. Jordan O wants to know, why do crows gather in such large numbers at certain times of the year? I'm talking thousands, he says. Yes. Or they say. Yeah, great question. So crows engage in what we call communal roosting. And this is not an uncommon behavior in birds. So during the mating season, the spring break, swipe right, let's get it on season. It's all coupleskate all the time. But when there's a

chill in the air and the leaves drop, things change. Come fall, crows start to all group together and sleep in central locations called roosts. So in Seattle, for example, and I totally recommend you check this out, Ali, if you have enough time. We have two big roosts. And one of them is at the UW Bothell campus that house about 15,000 birds every night. What? It's amazing. Yeah. And you stand, there's this incredible viewing area on top of one of the parking lots. And it's just a river, a river of crows. Oh my God. And it's incredible. I looked up a video of this and it seems like CGI. It's this gorgeous tide in the dusky sky. And it's beautiful and captivating. And yes, a little scary, kind of like watching a thunderstorm or an activated mob shoveling through the mall on

Christmas Eve. Ravens do this too. And it's probably driven by a couple of different things. The main one is predator aversion, right? Safety in numbers. But it might also serve as, information exchange center. There isn't good evidence of that in crows, but there's really good evidence of that in ravens, actually, where they go to roost to tell other ravens about where food is. Yes, which is, we can get into that, but it's not an altruistic thing. It's just I need buddies in order to get this food. Maybe it's where they meet socialize and meet potential mates or whatever. But yeah, so the rivers of crows or the big numbers at certain times of years is basically during the nonbreeding season, crows all get together at night to sleep,

mostly for safety in numbers, but probably for other reasons too. Is it wrong to find that cute? No, it's like a big sleepover. I know. I think it's cute. I know. And it's just, it's powerful. And one of the things I always like to tell people is for folks living in urban areas, we watch things like planet earth and we see these amazing animal migrations, caribou and wildebeest or the, you know, monarch butterflies. And you're like this, oh my gosh, that's so cool. Like I want to see something like that in my life. And you can,

because this is a totally natural behavior that crows do where they group in these big numbers. And if you live in a place like Seattle or many other metropolitan areas across the country, you can watch crows gather in the tens to hundreds of thousands, depending on where you are. And you can have that experience of this mass collection of wildlife. And I just think that one of my favorite parts about crows is this opportunity that they present for people living in areas where they maybe otherwise don't feel a huge connection to the natural world or to natural spaces to really engage with this animal that is native to that area and participates in so many cool behaviors, whether it's this mass roosting or just how

smart they are and this attentiveness that they have to us. And so for the urban night, they are just such an incredible opportunity for natural history and for wildlife viewing. So you can have an at and burrow moment like in the middle of downtown. Yeah. Just peep up some crows. Yeah, it's awesome. That's really inspiring because that is one of those birds we take for granted so much. So much.

Yeah. I'm going to start staring at them. I know, but they're just, they belong in our urban spaces. They got there naturally and shit, they just do so many cool things. I mean, they play. Do they play? Yes, they do. And one of my favorite, I have two great playing stories. One of them was, so all over Seattle, we have these ornamental trees called sweet gum trees. Yes.

They're the ones that make the sidewalks really sticky and they have these circular like ping-pong sized cones and they're really spiky. But if you like, you know, get your foot on top of them, kind of roll your foot around, you can smush down all the spikes and then they just like literally turn into a ping-pong. And I was out at Green Lake and I saw this crane. It had one and it would fly up into the air and it would drop it and then it would fly down and catch it right before it landed on the ground. And it did it, you know, five times until I took my phone out to videotape and then I was like, Oh no, I'm done. It's like, Mom, I don't share these stories to like create this hierarchy of things that we should appreciate. But like these behaviors, you're not going to see

in chickadees. You're going to see other cool things in chickadees, but there's just, there is something really special about crows. And I encourage people who just think of them as these like icky trash birds to watch them and appreciate that there's this really soft side, you know, they have, they mate for life and they can live to be 17 years old. And they spend a lot of time reinforcing that bond and it's adorable. Yeah. Like how? So aloe preening is the main way that birds do that, which means mutual grooming. So you'll see one bird kind of like tilt its head down and the other one will use its beak and it'll sort of like, you know, groom the feathers on the neck and around the face, you know, the area where the individual can't reach. So that, you'll see

that really typically, and they're watching you back. Right? I mean, like, again, chickadees are cool and do a lot of cool things. That is nuts to think that the crow is like, oh, they got in the mouth again. Or they're like, Oh, who's this guy coming over? Yeah, nuts. It is. Okay, prepare for the sweetest story that you may not be able to handle. Okay, here we go. On my blog, I used to talk a lot more about go, which go is one of my first data points. It was a bird that I did my one of, you know, one of my subjects for my first field experiment. And then after that experiment ended, because part of that experiment was feeding the birds, it had gotten used to me, you know, coming every day and putting food on the ground. And I was never the scary person. So they sort of

continued to like me after the study ends. And it was a campus bird. It was right by my bus stop, actually. And so after the experiment ended, go and whose name is derived from her bands, which was green over orange, would always like, you know, fly over to me and be like, Hey, what's up? Can I, am I going to get that peanut? And, and it was this amazing, I loved my favorite part about it was when I was walking, I could hear her band's jingle. So I could hear when she was following me around. And it was just like, there's, I mean, just you feel like snow white. It's just amazing to have this wild animal that's like, I know you, can I have some food? That is weird. Because you just think that they'd be so indifferent to you. But it's like,

but they lady. Yeah. And, and that's the difference between crows and a lot of birds. Because you can hand, you know, you can train a lot like chickadees. I don't know why I picked them, but chickadees are like, what, what, who me? Yeah. But you can, you know, like in Stanley Park in Vancouver, for example, there's a, or there used to be a place where, you know, there's a, there was a guy and he'd hand you a little birdseed and you'd put it in your palm and chickadees would flock to you. Right. Cause they, they learned that it's okay to feed from people, but they're not discriminating among those people versus crows or like you, you feed me and I'm cool with you and I will get close to you, but not to these other people. And it's just incredible.

And, and the reason I said I used to talk a lot more about go is she, she died last year. Oh no, how do you know? Because, because she was banded some, when somebody found her body, they reported her and what happened? We don't know. Yeah. It was, it was the middle of summer. So her body had already decompote, you know, beyond our ability to detect, but she was at least 16. Whoa. So yeah. She had a good life. So she maybe died of old age? Yeah. Who knows? I hope they gave her a good send off. I hope so too. And I, I collected her body. You did? I did. So I actually, I have her bands. You do? What did you do with them? I have her, her bones and her bands in a little box. And I, my husband for a graduation present actually

commissioned a portrait of her. So I think I'm going to create like a shadow box with her with the picture. Madison Mayfield did the illustration. She's an amazing natural history illustrator based out of Australia. And, and so I'm going to have a little shadow box with her portrait and then her bands. Cause I, I like loved this bird so much. She was this, you know, I don't know how to describe it. It's just incredible. When you found out. Oh, I cried. Yeah. And I have a whole blog post about saying goodbye to her. And because she, you know, I did this research because I love these birds. And because she was really close to my office, like I said, once the experiment was over and I could start to engage with her, you know, in a more casual way

and an uncontrolled way, I would often go to her territory when I was just like bent out of shape and stressed and she would fly over to me and, and I would look at her and, you know, give her peanut or whatever. And I just sort of would breathe inspire me to keep doing the work I was doing. Cause I was like, I love these birds. Everyone needs to love these birds. Like, I wonder if this is going to make anyone make a new crow friend at the bus stop. You totally should. I mean, you know, don't, don't overdo it with the food because we, you can sort of exceed the caring capacity of your neighborhood and it can be consequential. But, um, you know, I always have, you know, a couple of peanuts in my pocket.

Really? Yeah. And then, you know, I see a crown. I toss it a nut and you're like, Hey, what's up? Yeah. Do you really always have peanuts in your pocket? Yeah. That's the best. Yeah. It's good. It makes doing laundry kind of annoying for my husband sometimes. Oh my God. Now, what is the, what is the shittiest thing about your job? I mean, I imagine the passing of, of a beloved specimen, but what, what sucks about what you do? Uh, the hardest thing about what I was doing was, was working in an environment where I really regularly had to deal with people. Um, because that was often also the best part, right? Because that, I mean, that's where my science communication took off was just having

to explain constantly what I was doing. But, you know, sometimes when you're just, you're, I'm at work when I'm there, right? It'd be like people constantly coming up to you and whatever job you're doing, being like, Hey, what are you doing? Can you explain to me? And then the best was when I'd be like, I, you know, Oh, I'm doing, I'm with the University of Washington. I'm doing this field study on crows, but you know what? My birds, they're here. I gotta take data. Um, you know, I'm, I'll be done in 30 minutes. I'm happy to come back if you want to point out your house and I'll tell you more. And they'd be like, Oh no, I totally get it. That's cool. So the other day, I though I want to, I just be like, I feel like you're not listening to me.

And so sometimes it'd be a little bit frustrating the day to day of making a field experiment work when you are combating people walking their dogs or people using leaf blowers. I hate leaf blowers. They're the worst. And they'd be like, Oh, it's a dead crow here. Let me blow it away with my leaf blower. And I'm just like, no, God, I've been here for hours and you just ruined everything. Oh no. That part just, you know, after years of this kind of urban field work is really, um, it just grates on you. And just, especially when I was working in downtown Seattle, just a number of times where I just genuinely felt unsafe, you know, where I was, I'm, you know, a woman, there's lots of people around. And yet sometimes, you know, you get that dude and he's

just staring and he's too close. Yeah. And you're like, I just want to be in the woods. I feel like I want to go in the safety where there's just wolves and badgers and bears. Exactly. Which is why I'm going to Denali next. I'm like, I'm ready to have to worry about different kinds of predators. Now, what is, I don't even know how you're going to answer this, but what is the best thing about what you do? What do you love the most about crows or about your work or about the work that you did to get your PhD? I mean, I feel like this whole podcast has been the answer to that question. I mean, the thing I love most about crows is that they are so interesting and they are full of surprises, which sometimes was the worst thing, right? Because

then I'd be like, God damn it, why can't you just make this work? I am trying so hard. But yeah, I mean, just the day to day of getting to watch an animal that's so interesting and dynamic is amazing. Getting to talk to people about this animal and watch them light up when they're like, oh, can I tell you my crow story or just that moment of people saying, wow, I had no idea. I guess crows are maybe cooler than I thought. I mean, that's kind of like at the end of the day that shift is how we build empathy with the natural world. So, you know, all of those things, that's why I do it. That's why I love it. And where can people find your work? Because you tweet magnificently. Thank you. So, folks can find me. Corvid research is the short answer to that

question. Corvid research on Twitter. Corvid research on Instagram. Corvid research dot block. Good job. Continuity of socials is so helpful. Yes, it is. You really had good foresight on that. And so, people can reach out, share with you cool pictures of birds, maybe ask you questions. Yeah. So, thank you so, so much for being here. I'm never going to look at a crow the same. Good. That's my job. So, I did my job. And I think for Halloween, I want to be someone researching crows. Yes. That's my costume. Thank you again. Thank you so much. So, find smart people, ask them stupid questions, whether it's your huge science hero or if it's a lady feeding a peanut to a bird at a bus stop. Ha. That was a trick. Because in this case, they could be the same person.

So, once again, find and follow Dr. Kaylee Swift. She's at Corvid research on Instagram, on Twitter. The blog is Corvid research dot blog. Look up her videos on YouTube. She's Kaylee Swift on there. And keep an eye out for more of her published work. And the next time you see a crow, look up, maybe give it a little thumbs up because they deserve our respect. They are very complex animals. Also, be nice because they will fucking remember if you are a mean jabroni to them. You can follow oligies at oligies on Twitter and on Instagram. And I'm Ali Ward with 1L on both. More links are up at aliward.com slash oligies. And patreon.com slash oligies is where you go to become a patron if you want to submit questions to the oligists before I record.

You can be a patron for as little as a dollar a month. 25 cents an episode. My heart is cheap. oligiesmerch.com has cool shirts and hats and pins so you can find other oligites in the wild. Thank you, Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch for managing that. The oligies Facebook group is full of the kind and the curious. And it is moderated by the kind and the curious Hannah Lippo and Erin Talbert. The theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorber of the band Islands. And all the audio stitching together is done by the lovely genius Stephen Ray Morris, who also hosts the Percast about cats and See Jurassic Right, which is a podcast about dinosaurs. Also quickly, a few things to mark in blood with a quill on your calendar this Halloween week.

On November 2nd, a Netflix original series called Brain Child Drops. And your old pod dad is in every episode with a beehive and a space age silver suit explaining science things. And it's four kids, so there's zero bad words in it. You're welcome. So check that out November 2nd. Also, my science show on CW also kid friendly is called Did I Mention Invention? That airs every Saturday. On November 3rd in LA, the International Myeloma Foundation is doing a comedy celebration benefit for multiple myeloma research. You can see the hematology where I talked to a researcher, Dr. Brian Dury, about that. It happens to be a cancer my dad has. So I'm quite invested in it. Performers at the comedy celebration include Cristella Alonso, Jim Jeffries, Natasha Legerro,

Gabriel Glacius, Cichiers Amada from SNL. Tickets start at 50 bucks and comedy.myeloma.org is where to get them. I'll also be hosting a live stream on Facebook that night from the red carpet. So you can watch that from home if you like. November 6th, my fellow Americans, please vote in the midterms. As you'll learn next week in an episode all about the apocalypse for real, it does matter. Also, it's my birthday that day. So please don't make me cry on my birthday. Okay. And at the end of each episode, I do tell you a secret for those who stick it out past the credits. This secret just happened like 10 minutes ago. I'm wearing a hoodie I wear all the time. It's very cozy. I just reached in the pocket and there was a dried, whizzened, tiny lemon in the pocket.

It's like almost ossified. I have no idea how long it's been there. I don't know when this got in my pocket. My estimate is at least one month. How has this tiny dead lemon not fallen out of the pocket before? How have I not realized this? It is the horseplay of a ghost. Okay, that's it. Bye-bye. Hello, Crow Diddly, Hume Cronin, Gregory Peck. Oh, I'm very uncomfortable having a gang of crows in our bedroom. It's a murder, honey. A group of crows is called a murder.