Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Crows

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why crows are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Crows. Known for being birds. Famous for being spooky. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why crows are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hi. I'm glad you could get your shoulder crow ready for the taping. Mine is not here. They had errands to do or something. They just caught and left. I don't know why. Thank you very much to at sticks on discord this is yet another of many supporters suggested topics

katie i for one thing i'm very excited to link a couple of episodes of creature feature because that podcast was the main thing i knew about crows going into researching this and as always with this show i provide the research but katie what is your relationship to this topic or opinion of it? You know, beyond all the stuff I've heard. Strongly in favor of crows. Very much am pro-crow. I love crows. I think they are not only just kind of beautiful animals.

I love their mystique. Their whole goth aesthetic really does it for me. But also they're very smart. They're very intelligent. They have really interesting social behaviors, really interesting puzzle behavior, puzzle solving behavior. There are more species of crows than I think people realize. And then the whole corvid family is really fascinating as well. So I love them. And I grew up in, we actually did have a good population of crows in Southern California. And it was always really, really cool, especially around once it started to get a little cooler, they would come by in the fall months and hang out in our yard.

And I just always loved it. A group of crows has never meant anything other than just feeling kind of happy for me because it didn't ever feel spooky. It just felt like, oh, it's nice. It's fall. The crows are crowing and they're hopping around and it's great. Yeah, they really are everywhere, it turns out, or at least five continents. U.S. culture, Canadian culture, European culture. They're sort of a horror bird. continents. US culture, Canadian culture, European culture, they're sort of a horror bird. But as a kid, I thought of them as a cool bird, and only one kind of bird and kind of the same as ravens.

And I've learned differently about all that now, except that they're cool. They're still cool. But yeah, they're still cool. They're neat. I've never totally gotten the thing where they are supposed to be some harbinger of ghosts or something. It doesn't make sense. thing where they are supposed to be some harbinger of ghosts or something. It doesn't make sense. That just makes them cooler, though. I still like that where it's like this is this is a little crow and then he's surrounded by ghosts. That's that's cool.

That's badass. Yeah, that's true. It's just good to be friends with ghosts. Yeah, I think. I know. I feel like we've got this like crow and ghost business all wrong because if you're friends with crows, they can go out and find stuff for you and fly around. And if you're friends with ghosts, they can go through

walls. Yeah. You don't have to be limited to doors like you are with your other friends. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's just like, Hey, Oh, I'm out of toilet paper, ghost buddy, help me. And then they just sort of poltergeist your toilet paper through a wall. Perfect. help me. And then they just sort of poltergeist your toilet paper through a wall. Perfect. And our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called, let's get statistical, statistical. I want to get statistical. Let me hear those numbers talk. numbers up this is good and that name was submitted by ls gregor thank you ls we have a new name for this every week please make a massillion whacking as possible submit through discord or to siftpod at gmail.com and first number here this is this

is a connection between europe and america and also it turns out there's more than one crow species. His first number is 2011. That is the year when birders sighted a hooded crow in New York. What? Yeah, turns out the hooded crow is one of the main European species along with the carrion crow. I see so many hooded crows here. I love them. I get to see them out my window. They look like a crow, but they have a little grayish white patch on their backs. And they sound like a crow.

They act like a crow. They just have an extra little decoration on them, and they're great. I love them. Yeah, one of the ways I have grown about crows is being stoked about hooded crows. They look cool. It's a really neat gray on black pattern. That's awesome. Yeah. And just for reference point, I live in Northern Italy, so that's why we get them here because they are found in Europe. Yeah. And that seems to be why they do get sighted pretty frequently when they

are in North America. The American Birding Association says in 2011, a hooded crow got spotted on Staten Island in New York. Also, in the early 2000s, there were sightings as far afield as Chicago, Illinois, New Braunfels, Texas, the Salton Sea of California, and White Court, Alberta. Wow. So is this because they are going far afield of their typical migration patterns? Are these like captive crows that have escaped? What's their whole deal? Did they get on Spirit Airlines and get redirected somewhere where they didn't want to go? That last thing, almost. We think either they were captive and got released, or more likely they got lost and rode ships, like human ships. Ah, yeah, interesting. And I feel for them there. Whenever you get on one of those budget airlines,

then you get stuck in some airport somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and you're just a little hooded crow, and now everyone's taking photos of you. It's a nightmare. Right. And you have a passport, but the picture, just the head looks black, right? So they can't tell you apart from other crows. They don't know. Right. It's anti-crow discrimination. And this all leads to a first quick takeaway, which is takeaway number one. The world's crows are not just black feathered. And a lot of the audience of this podcast is in the US or Canada. And in those countries, we're most familiar with a species called the American crow, or another species called the fish crow, that in general look mostly black feathered.

But it turns out there are more than 40 world species in the Corvus genus. A lot of those are crows and a lot of those have different patterns going on. Yeah, yeah. Even the black crows, like, you know, they do have a bit of iridescence to their feathers, which is really pretty. There is a great diversity of crow that I think is underappreciated. I had no idea until talking to you about hooded crows the other day and then researching. Yeah, it's great.

Like this hooded crow, really recommend it. Really cool gray section of the body. There's the pied crow, which is an African species that has a white central section of the body. Got a little vest. I like the pied crow because they've got a little waistcoat. Yeah. Very dignified. Yeah. A lot of little gentlemen out there, you know? Yeah. You just give them a little pocket watch. There's also a species called the house crow, which is mainly an Asian crow, but it's also known for catching rides on human ships on purpose.

Not like this lost crow that was in the U.S. And they often look grayish or bluish or a mix of both. And like you said, birders and people who think about this point out that the feathers of crows can really vary even if it's a black crow. Ornithologist David Sibley says that the wing and tail of crows tend to have glossier feathers than the rest of the body. And even the American crow can have a purplish or bluish tint in the right light. Like there's color variety to this famously black bird. You mentioned that the house crow intentionally cut a ride on a ship.

Where are they going? What are they doing? Apparently they're going everywhere. And then they are especially eating food on the boats. It doesn't seem like they're trying to. I see. This is a cruise for the crows. Yeah. Crow cruise. It doesn't really seem like they're trying to do the human equivalent of relocating.

They're just catching ships and the food on the ships and any other like cruise ship passengers almost. They're a crow away. Yes. I love that for them. I want little crow cruises where they can just hang out and eat roadkill and sip little fuzzy navels. I'm realizing that one of the biggest differences between crows and ravens is the puns.

Folks, it's totally different puns depending on which bird you're talking about, right? You can't, you can't do a crow away joke about ravens. Doesn't work. No, ravens are too, this is the thing is ravens are a little stuffier because you can't, because the word raven isn't as funny as the word crow. Yeah, it's true. You know, because ravens got the Edgar Allen Poe connection. They have this sort of like mystique.

And then I feel like crows get to just be a little sillier. It really feels that way. And they are different birds. And I'm in particular linking the Creature Feature episode with guest Dr. Kaylee Swift of the University of Washington, where Katie and Dr. Swift cover the main ways to tell them apart. But also it's pretty tricky unless you have a really good look at them, especially American crows versus most raven species.

The ravens are generally bigger, generally lower pitch noises and a different tail shape. Ravens have a pointier tail. And my favorite difference I learned is from creature feature because Katie very effectively plays the sound of crows and the sound of ravens. It's a different pitch. It's a different sound. Yeah, I feel like the crow call is more of the kind of cartoonish caw sound. And then the raven call is a little bit more of a croaking sound, a little lower pitch. And Katie has great freesound.org versions of both sounds. We're going to play them for you now. Here first is the sound of a crow. Okay, you know, fun. And then here's the more serious sound, as you'll hear, of a raven.

Bark, bark, bark. Bark, bark, bark. Bark, bark. I feel like I should be giving like American Idol comments on this. Like, like it was a little pitchy dog. It's fun that you are Randy. That's fine. I'll be Randy too. We'll just be two Randys.

Everyone's Randy. Listen, dog. Yeah. In a perfect world. Listen, dog. That would be, we would all only say that. But yeah, no, I mean, it is, it can be tricky, even if you know how to spot the difference between a raven and a crow, it can definitely

be tricky. Because yeah, their profiles are quite similar. And it's only when you can check out these, the details, like see nicely spread out tail feathers, or really see their, that bristly little beard on their necks for a raven up close that you can really tell the difference, but from a distance, it's very difficult. Yeah. I was trying to find what are any other differences, and the Sibley Guide to Birds says American crows flap their wings more often than ravens when flying. But how am I going to get two of them side by side and count the flaps and note it? I know someone could someone could do that but i'm not skilled enough man i can't do it now i'm trying to imagine alex hurting a crow and a raven like it's like come on fellas come on let's do this

we got it we gotta we gotta compare here trying to get them into a wind tunnel yeah lots of scratches lots of getting packed and i'm dressed like a track and field coach or something, like with a little clicker and a stopwatch. You've got a whistle and athletic shorts. Like, come on, come on, boys. Come on, fellas. Let's get a hustle. Just like the weirdest Ted Lasso. Yeah, sure. Getting your eye pecked out.

Okay, pal. Okay. I'm Ted Lasso about it. Oh, okay, pal. Okay. I'm Ted Lasso about it. I would watch a Ted Lasso where he's trying to coach a team of crows. There's a Mexican comedy show about a soccer team. The show is called Club de Cuervos.

The mascot is a crow. So anyway, that's fun. Ah, okay. But the soccer isn't played by crows. Yeah, it's a human team. They didn't go all the way. Boring. Boring.

Nothing in the rules of soccer says that it can't be played by crows. Where in the rules does it say a crow can't play soccer? Yeah, air crow. It even makes more sense. Yeah, exactly. Air Bud is a dog. He doesn't belong in the air. He's a dog. The heck?

Yeah. And the next number here is a big estimate. The next number is 100,000 years ago. 100,000 years ago, that is the approximate date when humans developed hook-shaped tools. Huh. Yeah. Obviously kind of a guess, but psychologist Alex Taylor of the University of Auckland says that we think Homo sapiens evolved around 300,000 years ago, and then around 100,000 years ago, humans started making hook-shaped tools for hooking and pulling and grabbing things. That comes up in a crows episode because there were a couple species of crow that are the only other animal known to make hook-shaped tools on purpose, which is cool. Are we going to talk about the New Caledonian crow?

Yes, that's the key one. So excited. I love these guys. New Caledonia, it's an island in the Pacific Ocean. It's home to the Kanak people, and it's part of the country of France. But it's also home to the... It's an archipelago. Is that how you say it? Archipelago? Archipelago? Archipelago.

I think you had it, but we've progressed. Archipelago. It's gone now. I keep getting away from it. Archipelago. Yeah. And the crows there, the New Caledonian crow, are particularly amazing tool makers and a whole other species of crow, by the way.

But they've been observed to not just use items like sticks as tools, but also to use their beaks to fashion more complicated tools into a hook shape. And I'll link a particularly fun video of a TED Talk by University of Washington researcher John Marsluff because he shows footage of a New Caledonian crow bending a wire into a hook and then pulling an item up by its handle with it. And then the crowd like applauds like it's a sports highlight.

It's really cool. Again, start giving Corvid sports deals is what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, I think that I think, yeah, what's so interesting about this is in the wild, they use sticks, right? And they stick it into wood or trees to get at grubs, insects that are inside. And sometimes what happens is when you stick the stick in like the little grub will like bite onto the stick just instinctively and then a new caledonian crow will pull out the grub as it's like biting onto the stick um and so that's kind of that's like one

way they can do it but then they will take these sticks and sort of modify them bend the end of the stick a little bit so it's more of a hook shape because they have found has given them more success in getting pulling out these insects. And so in a lab setup, right, like they don't have access to wire in the wild, but in a laboratory setup, they do. And so they can do even more complex tool shapes when we give them a strip of wire instead of a twig. They can make a full on hook to be able to correctly solve a puzzle by pulling up basically like a little container to help them get to a treat. And so it's really, really interesting that these natural behaviors, right? From basically like when I stick a stick in here, the grub bites onto it and I can pull it out.

To like, hey, if I actually hook the stick, if I modify the stick, it's even better at pulling out these bugs. To like, oh, well, this weird human gave me a wire. I can use this to solve this puzzle. It's incredible. Yeah, like the hardware store unlocks their abilities in a way that nature does not. Yeah. Can you imagine just letting these new Caledonian crows into a Home Depot? They would have a ball.

They would be more excited than like my dad. Yeah. You've seen a dad, a dad in Home Depot, you know, or a mom. It's I want to, I don't want to do classic gender roles here, but you know, the person who does the home renovation, right. And goes into a Home Depot and then there's that, that glimmer in their eye as they smell the freshly cut plywood and glue or whatever's in there. And they're ready to go check out some galvanized nails like you can see that in this new caledonian crow's face how excited it would be to talk to jeff about like different types of paint stripper each aisle is a new joy you know they're like oh and this one look at this pvc

this pvc i mean these are shapes we don't have at home. Look at this. You're like, yeah, I know. Sure. I'm the person that does most of like the home. What would you call it? Like home renovation. We're not really renovation, but like fixing things and so on and getting hardware. The tool time. Yeah, the tool time.

Yeah, tool time. I'm sort of the tool time of the household. Yeah, the tool time. Yeah, tool time. I'm sort of the tool time of the household. And yeah, I love I love a hardware store. And I love imagining myself as being as ingenious as one of these new Caledonian crows as I'm like, smashing a hammer into a wall or something like Auckland, he suggests that it's possible not only are crows the only other animal making hook tools, but they might have done it before us. Because both species existed 100,000 years ago. It's totally plausible crows figured it out first. Like, why not? out first. Like, why not? I'd believe it. Honestly, there's often a lot of hubris when we think back on human evolution where we assume, hey, we're the only ones who can use tools and we're the smartest and the best at everything. But yeah, no, I could totally see these guys figuring out the hook shape first when we were still just kind of bashing our little monkey heads against a rock to try to crush a nut. And even with the heads, that leads us into another takeaway within the numbers here. Takeaway number two.

Crows are so intelligent, they are changing our understanding of brain anatomy. Yes. And even our understanding of dinosaurs anatomy and even our understanding of dinosaurs. Yes. Yeah. I love this. I mean, one thing to note is that technically birds are dinosaurs. They're not just like descended from dinosaurs. If you kind of look at the phylogeny of dinosaurs and birds, they're technically still just dinosaurs, a type of dinosaur that is still alive. But hang on, when I was a kid, drawings of dinosaurs had no feathers whatsoever. And then they got them later when I wasn't a kid anymore. So I feel they're very different, actually. I base my understanding of the current world based on how I was when I was

a kid, which is why I'm always surprised how short chairs and tables are. I'm like, wait, this is supposed to be taller. Not how I remember it when I was a little kid. I'm going to write to President Clinton and President George W. Bush about this. They're still the president, right? Yeah, I mean, our understanding of dinosaurs is changing a lot, both based on our new sort of fossil evidence that shows that, yeah, a lot of them had feathers. And then also just like kind of understanding that, hey, birds are the only last living dinosaurs. So maybe we should use our understanding of birds to understand how dinosaurs were like in terms of

hey maybe they were actually colorful because yes it's true that there are obviously birds like crows that are black or white there are plenty of brown birds but there are lots of really colorful birds uh and a fun thing is there's recent evidence that T-Rex had lips. It didn't just like its teeth didn't just stick out. It had these nice plump lips to cover its teeth to protect them, which I love it. So like they're feathery, they're colorful, and they've got beautiful, kissable lips. Somebody's dream just came true. List thing.

You wanted a smooch a dinosaur? Congratulations. Quick, get on the horn to teen beat or whatever. They're now kissable. Someone with a time machine gets one little smooch in on a T-Rex before getting eaten. What a confusing thing that must be for a T-Rex before getting eaten. What a confusing thing that must be for a T-Rex to get smooched by its food. Too bad, T-Rex. You're my boyfriend now. You're my boyfriend now. That's the deal. So hard to hug with those little arms.

We as humans and trying to understand the world, we have tried to figure out anatomy over and over again, like all science works, it's iterative. And there's a general belief about human cognition that we think humans use a brain region called the cerebral cortex to solve problems. And you can Google a picture, but it's the large outer layer on top of the cerebrum. And that might be what we use for problem solving, but we've also assumed that makes humans special when it comes to problem solving. But crows in particular are also excellent problem solvers, despite lacking that structure of the brain.

And we've proceeded to find out that crows just have a differently structured brain than us and than great apes. They have, next number here is about 1.5 billion with a B. A crow brain has about 1.5 billion neurons. It's a similar total to great ape species like gorillas, but they're just smaller neurons, more tightly packed. They structured their brains very differently, probably in order to keep them small and light for flying, but it's still incredibly useful for problem solving. And with that revelation, we find

ourselves saying like, oh, we know dinosaurs had tiny brains, but maybe they were also brilliant. And maybe other animals are also, you know, animal intelligence is hard to measure, but maybe other animals are brilliant without having the human shaped brain that we just assumed is superior and different. Yeah, I mean, we kind of have this idea of like, big brain equals big thoughts. But it's, it's, it really is literally sort of in the structure of the brain, like you want, it's the ability to make neural connections. So if that is condensed right into a small brain, but very efficient brain, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, assuming that a big computer is going to have better processing power than a small smartphone. And it's like, it could, but that's not always the case. It depends on how efficient

that smartphone is. It depends on the, you know, how, like, how much, look, I'm speaking on my depth here because I don't know how computers work or phones work, but I'm going to say the circuits are more efficient or something. I can fill in here. What we do is we pray to the gods of podcasting at little altars. And then from there, the podcast is uploaded to the listener. So that's how it works. There's tiny men, tiny men in our computers. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it, yes, for brains, though, which I know a little bit more about, is that, yeah, you want a lot of folds and connections.

Like having more neural structures does somewhat translate to being able to have more complex cognition. But it's really fine if it's a small brain as long as you have all those neural connections. It's not like it has to be. It's all in sort of how you use that little brain. Exactly. And this is all cutting edge science, especially that neuron number is from a couple of years ago. But, you know, now and in the past, we've observed crows doing things that we presumed a human shapedshaped brain was necessary to do. There's amazing studies at the University of Washington finding that American crows remember human faces and can hold grudges against humans. That study is hilarious, by the way.

That is the funniest. Because they had researchers wear these masks and then hold a taxidermied crow out. And it's so crazy. If you look up the University of Washington crow study and look at those photos because they are so creepy. They look like a horror movie. And crows reacted basically the same as a human would react given the same scene of like,

what the hell are you doing? And were really upset at this person and they would memorize that face, that mask. I mean, the reason they wore masks was first to make sure that they could, you know, have that as sort of a variable that remained constant. And secondly, because if they memorized the face of the actual person, they would harass that person for many years. So, yeah, they learned to hold a grudge against people who were sort of menacingly

holding this taxidermied crow, this crow body. They could even pass on these grudges to their offspring and teach them that, hey, we don't like that guy. Yeah. That's one of the few animals that they have to bother thinking about how the animals will think of them after the study, because crows are just out there and also super smart. So, you know, other animals won't be like, you're the one who made me run through a maze for cheese and then come after you, you know, like it's too smart of an animal. Yeah. Yeah. Also, like we do studies with like pet dogs where we do silly things and then, but the dogs are so forgiving, but a crow, uh-uh. And they've learned other

systems. Like apparently both in Japan and in California, crows have been observed using human cars as nutcrackers. Yes. They will watch for cars to stop at a red light, drop nuts in front of the car tires path, future path, and then the car drives over the nut when the light turns green and they enjoy the cracked open nut. Good for them. Yeah, it's so interesting to me. I think there was some observations of them using areas too that are easier for them to cross. So like crosswalk areas or streetlights so that they can actually get to the nut once it's been cracked open. But I mean, it's not, I don't think this is like a really rigorous study. They've done just like the observation, like people observing these crows behavior. We have the mix of science and regular observation helping it. There's just so

much evidence of crow intelligence across all these species too. That New Caledonian crow is particularly amazing. And there's a study in the New York Times covered recently scientists built a whole new task for them. They built a vending machine style device and gave the crows pieces of paper. And if they tore gave the crows pieces of paper. And if they tore the right shape and piece of paper, they could feed it into the machine like a dollar bill and get treats. And the crows appeared to mentally model each other's paper tearing techniques in order to imitate successes, which is extremely advanced mimicry for any animal, including humans. That's amazing. Yeah, I've heard of these studies before where they just a general paper strip that they can find and then turn in

for treats. But this sounds like a new study because they are actually shaping the paper in a specific shape in order for it to work, which is amazing. Yeah, it seems like we just keep doing a study saying, well, crows can do that. And then we try to come up with a new thing. And then they do that, too, is my sense of it. Next time, they're just going to be counterfeiting money. Crows are going to be like printing out fake money, going into 7-Elevens and getting their tackies and onion rings. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then they do that in the next year. It's like, hey, crow, do my tax return. Do it. And then they can do it. Like, OK, well, great. OK. I would love a crow to do my tax return.

I'm so sick of these, you know, predatory tax companies that, you know, do your taxes for you, but then lobby to make it harder to do your taxes. Let's have crows do it. Right. Instead of a predatory company, let's get a omnivore scavenging company, right? Yeah, there you go. I'd let a crow take financial advantage of me, honestly. We'll cut this out. So no crows listen and do that. That will protect you. Can't put that out there. There's even like with iterating on these studies, they did a bunch of New Caledonian crow studies. They said, okay, these are geniuses. And then other researchers said, hey, there's another Hawaiian crow species called the Alala.

researchers said, hey, there's another Hawaiian crow species called the Alala. And that has a similar face to New Caledonian crows. So they did studies of those and checked and those are also brilliant at making tools. Also, the Alala is extinct in the wild. There's only several dozen left in captivity. So, you know, hopefully that discovery helps people proceed to continue conserving them and get them back out into the wild. But it seems like every time we check every species of crow, something surprising and cool is an ability they have. It's amazing. video I found of a crow playing one of those games where it's like you know the little uh like shaped block in the shape shape hole shapey game where it's like you have the shape it's a square block or a round block or whatever you can put it in the hole that corresponds with that shape

and it was given this like miniature version and this little it's like this uh I guess rescue crow like trying out this game. And then it just gets so frustrated with the game. It like picks up the entire game and like throws it down off the table. And I love that because it's like, yes, yes, little crow. This is how I react as well when I can't solve a puzzle. Yeah, like the last last thing to say here is apparently crows are even changing our concept of finding populations of animals for animal studies. Because there's a there's a past few decades realization with human studies where we figured out that a lot of human studies are based on specifically the the white undergraduates at colleges.

Those tend to be the subjects, and so a lot of our results are based on people that are called WEIRD. The acronym is WEIRD. It stands for Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic. And, you know, so that's meaningful for studying humans. Like, we need all varieties of humans. in humans. Like we need all varieties of humans. I'm going to link about a recent study of crows where they realized that, hey, maybe this has been happening with animal subjects too. Yeah. And they coined the acronym STRANGE for basically the kinds of animals that are willing to be studied in a study because they found that a lot of crows were too smart and needed some coaxing

to be bothered with this stupid human study that is not worth doing. Yeah, this is something that happens a lot in animal behavioral studies, particularly when you're using captive animals, which is pretty much the only way you can do like a controlled lab study. You can have like observe animal observations in the wild, but it's so hard to control for everything. So a lot of these behavioral studies are done in a lab setting. And then so you're taking this animal and putting it in this very alien environment where their motivations aren't going to be sort of the same as they would be in the wild. And so you like learning from like what they're able to do. It's like you're not necessarily learning what their natural behaviors are. You're also maybe selecting, like you said,

the strange crows that allow themselves to be part of a behavioral study. I mean, this is the whole thing with our misunderstanding of dog behavior for so long was because we based our understanding of wolf social structures on captive wolves, whose social structures were completely different from wild wolves. And that whole like dominant alpha stuff, which was debunked,

is like because we use this wolf population in a sort of a wolf rescue that was not at all. They were under very strange circumstances because they were in a captive environment. So their behavior was different from what it typically is in the wild. That's amazing. I love that with the smartest animals, it's particularly acute. It's like, oh, we've looked at all the most catchable crows and dogs and come up with amazing results. I don't know. What about the less catchable ones?

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a bit of a problem. And then like, if you have captive born and raised animals, they're also gonna, their behaviors are going to be different because they were raised by humans. So it's, it's yeah. Behavioral studies in general for both humans and animals are very difficult to pull off and have be actually either representative of reality or scientifically rigorous. It's really hard to get both in a study. And that social element is so big for crows. We have just done two takeaways and a bunch of numbers. So we'll be back with two more takeaways about that social element and about the creation of the world. Folks, as you know, this show exists because of listener support. The vast majority of what makes this show possible, the only reason this show can financially and business-wise exist, is direct listener support.

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at checkout. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Couple more numbers and takeaways here, starting with takeaway number three. Crows are family-oriented birds with two surprising reactions to death.

It tugs on my heartstrings always when any animal shows that they kind of have this, I don't want to call it understanding, but at least they seem to react in eerily human-like ways to situations that are tragic. Yeah. And there's going to be a real range of either similarity or dissimilarity to human values here, but a lot of it is similar. Many very intelligent animals are very social. And the Cornell Ornithology Lab says the American crow species, for example, And the Cornell Ornithology Lab says the American crow species, for example, often nests in giant communal groups, especially in winter. They start at sizes of a few hundred crows and can get much bigger. There's one report from the 1910s that there was a group of two million crows in Oklahoma. I don't totally believe that number, but there are massive gatherings of thousands of crows whenever there's room and when the crows want to.

Just when they feel like it, when they feel like partying. Yeah. Apparently, especially in winter, it helps them gather together to find food and I guess be warm together. I don't believe two million of them were in one place in Oklahoma. That seems wrong. But there are big groups. Yeah, it seems like a lot. Along with just being giant groups, apparently crows form very specific family groups. Yeah, it seems like a lot. Along with just being giant groups, apparently crows form very specific family groups. Cornell's Kevin McGowan says that a crow family can include up

to 15 individuals. It's also not just the simple ties of parents and biological children. There can be step-parent relationships, siblings, nephews, nieces., also crow children may stick around the family for several years to help raise younger children. It's so sweet. I love a happy family in nature. And yeah, I mean, I think that you do see this particularly among, not always, there are plenty of intelligent animals that are more solitary. But yeah, particularly among very intelligent animals, these sort of multi-generational family groups. Yeah, a lot of times, especially with non-mammals, I just assume they, let's say, lay an egg and then just move on. But crows are really on it. It's not that cold-hearted reptile thing I think of. Yeah, I mean, there is dedicated offspring care for everything from invertebrates, like centipedes, to frogs, to reptiles, to birds.

And sometimes it is just lay an egg and go, see ya. Yeah, like crows apparently even do adoption in their families, where they'll take in stray individuals. And that apparently in particular happens in the West Nile virus epidemic around the turn of the millennium. Around 1999, there was a mass die-off of many bird species, including crows, and researchers saw a lot of crow family adoption as they monitored the groups. That's so wonderful. It's so sweet. They just, they're coming together as a community.

And it takes a village to raise a little crow. That's so sweet. I love them so much. It's just great. And it's so different from presuming a crow knows somebody died and is friends with ghosts. You know, like it's not how we view them culturally. I mean, you know, I could see, I could definitely see a crow being a friend to Casper, the friendly ghost.

Oh, that's true. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, hanging out, being nice, being nice to dead people instead of making them answer questions on a Ouija board, you know, hanging out, being nice to dead people instead of making them answer questions on a Ouija board. You know, like it's kind of rude to like interrupt someone's afterlife to be like, hey, move around this game board so that I can laugh with my friends. It's like, you know what? Let me let me have my afterlife retirement. First, they tried to recruit me for a stupid study, and then they recruited me for not even one of the top 10 board games. Ouija? Forget it. Come on.

Pick up Catan sometime. It's great. Yeah, why don't you play Settlers of Catan with ghosts? Come on. Give them something with a little bit of problem solving. Yeah. a little bit of problem solving. Yeah. I just, I, I think there's something really wonderful about this feeling of like, you know, we often in evolutionary biology, there's this idea of like, well, you, you're not really going to do anything altruistic because it's not necessarily good for your survival, but we do see altruism in nature. And it doesn't mean that it's not being done for their evolutionary survival. But it is, I think it is something to consider that, yeah, nature is not

always just brutally efficient. Animals aren't always just kind of ruthless. They can have emotions that will make them respond to something like a little nestling in need in the same kind of empathetic response that a human might do. Yeah, and then that's all true. And then also, it turns out crows have one particularly weird reaction to death that is totally different from humans. There's relatively recent observations of some crows having sexual intercourse with the body of a dead crow. And also apparently many animal species have been variously observed doing this, but that team at the University of Washington and Dr. Kaylee Swift, they've done the first actual scientific study of any animal species doing this behavior.

In a sample of crows they observed, about 24% of them responded to a dead crow by doing something with the body, like pecking at it or moving it or something. And then a tiny subset of those encounters involved something sexual. And so that's super weird and not understood yet. And most humans don't do that And most humans don't do that. Most humans don't do that. And also, if people heard the recent ducks episode and bonus show, we talked about ducks being one of the very few birds that have penises, but crows, like almost all other

birds, do not. And so this sexual interaction is just placing the body openings into contact with each other that are for sexual stuff. It's just kind of like smooshing two Cheerios together, to be honest, folks. Yeah, that's how it's described. They don't reference the Cheerios brand, probably for sponsorship reasons. But yeah, that's what the articles say. I fumbled a valuable Cheerios sponsorship. And the other crow reaction to death is kind of human, kind of not. It is holding a gathering around a dead crow.

And this is the main thing they do. That sex thing is very strange and rare. Apparently when a crow finds a dead crow, they'll call out and they'll bring other crows to the location. I found some sources that called this a crow funeral, but it's not clear that mourning is going on. It seems to be mainly a strategic thing where they draw attention to the death and try to be on the lookout for who or what killed this fellow crow. It's a murder mystery. Yeah.

A murder, murder mystery. Yeah. And in the bonus show, we'll talk about the whole murder thing that they're associated with. It's funny because like, you know, the whole thing, like it's a murder of crows, a group of crows. I don't think most ornithologists refer to a group of crows as a murder. I think they just say a flock of crows.

It is. Yeah, it is fun to imagine scientists bothering to use that term murder and like swooshing a cape as they say it or something like that's not the vibe. It's serious work. Yes. But I do. I like that crows want to get to the bottom of things. You've got you've got Crow Columbo.

You've got Crow Miss Marple. You've got, you've got Crow Colombo, you've got Crow Miss Marple, you've got Crow Sherlock. I just want to see like a Crow version of. Ooh, Pua Crow. Pua Crow. Very good. Yes. Sorry. It felt good. No, no, it's a good one. It's definitely a good one. It's not, it's not, uh, it's not going to make people turn off the podcast, but yeah. Folks, send in your drawings for me of a crow with a big mustache like Poirot. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, do that. Yeah. Like I, I, I dig a crow mystery where they are trying to find the culprit. And it is interesting because, yeah, when we see like a group of animals surrounding a dead animal like our first thought is probably like this is a wake but it could also yeah be like this is alarming and we're kind of anxious about that so like we should probably have safety in numbers right now yeah and that is also probably the most human-like compared to humans not in the towns and cities that we built and the structured life we built. If you're a human out in the woods and you find a dead human, it's much more of this crow reaction. It's like, hey, what happened? Practical things, right? Like, hey, this like being alarmed at a death, right, for your own self-preservation or because like if a family member dies, this is bad for your survival. I think those kinds of things, right, do turn into emotions over evolutionary timescales, right? our brains sort of give us motivation to do the kinds of behaviors that benefit us.

Those motivations comes in the forms of like either reward or fear or, you know, like sadness. And I think the more complex emotions of grief can kind of evolve out of these more practical things. Like we need to figure out what's going on. Who's to say if maybe our funerals of today and our wakes of today are not sort of a much more evolved version of sort of like a gathering to ensure safety of the group when a death has happened? Yeah, 100%. That's, yeah, it's such an amazing progression to think about. Wow. And with all cultural practices, that leads us to the last takeaway of the main show. Because takeaway number four. Crows hold a huge range of meanings across world cultures, in particular in Native North America.

Yeah, yeah. Because I think like for, you know, what do we call them? Weirds? Westerners? Yeah them weirds westerners uh weird wasps uh western uh european culture you know it's like like crows are sort of an omen you know this like creepy thing that you know is there to give you bad news or pick your eyes out, which does not happen, by the way. Right. It's not really related to the general practices of this extremely common world bird. They live on every continent except South America and Antarctica, and they don't really act the European and US horror movie way. So this takeaway is a few stories of people associating crows with

love, with immortality, with an apocalypse in one case, and with a few tales of the creation of the world. It's so many things to so many people. I love animals in folklore, mythology, and creation myths. It's like I shoot that directly into my veins. I love it. Yay. Because yeah, the key source here, it's an amazing book about specifically Crow mythology and lore. It's named Crow. It's written by Boria Sachs, who's an author and a lecturer at the University of Illinois Springfield. That's a great name. Boria Sachs. Glad to know it. Fantastic name. What a great name.

Boreasax. Glad to know it. Fantastic name. And I'm also linking further stuff about Native North America. And in particular, there's a Crow Nation. This got me curious about their name. The Crow Nation, that's an English acronym for a set of three Native peoples whose historical homelands include parts of present-day Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. homelands include parts of present-day Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. They're also still here, a very prominent group of modern people. They also hold a tribal fair every year in August, draws about 50,000 attendees usually. This episode topic got me curious about their names specifically, and it turns out that the English word and concept crow may or may not be accurate as far as what they call themselves, at least as a translation. The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian says people of the Crow Nation call themselves the Apsalicay.

And Apsalicay is a word meaning children of the large beaked bird. Oh, interesting. So it is a bird. It has a large beak. Right. And then apparently... But there's lots of North American birds with large beaks. And that's the thing.

Yeah, apparently French colonizers learned the name Apsalicay and what it means and then applied the French word for crow to the group. That could be the right bird, but there's also two ways it could be inaccurate. It could be either we misunderstood what Apsalic really means or those French guys misidentified birds in a basic birder way. Like the apsalic were like, we're named after that. And they like looked and were like, is that a crow and messed it up? Yeah, I think in general, colonizers were extremely sloppy. One could say even inconsiderate when it came to trying to

learn the language in the culture of the people here calm down wow hold on yeah yeah no i mean it's like it's the same like there was so much hubris in terms of learning both the learning about the wildlife in north america and the learning about the wildlife in North America and also learning about the people who are already here. And so we're still sort of those repercussions still carry through to this day where so much of our understanding of languages, culture, and also the animals that were here is sort of tainted by the sloppiness and the arrogance of the people who came here. Yeah, that kind of feeds into also the US and European horror movie version of Crows. I think if colonizers had paid more attention to the many legends we're about to talk about, they would have

additional ideas about crows to think about and share. It would be more fun. Because it turns out, many peoples used crows or ravens as central figures in creation stories. Their Inuit peoples have a story of a primeval being called Talungasak, who learned there was clay down at the bottom of a void. And then Talungasak took the form of a crow or raven to fly down, get the clay, and then mold that into plants, animals, and humans and create the world that we have. And then the Koryak people of modern Siberia have similar stories. People of modern Western Canada have a story of a great raven calling the world into being. The Athabascan people have a story of two primordial ravens. There's a white raven that creates the world and then a jealous black

raven brother that kills him. It's so interesting that crows are significant in so many creation myths. And I have to wonder if it's because people would observe intelligent behavior in crows, this kind of creative behavior that you see in crows, and then would imagine them as a creative force or something that would potentially, they would see a crow carrying sticks or something or doing something that seemed kind of intelligent and then imagine these creation myths from that. I think that's almost definitely it. Yeah. And they just didn't get that idea imprinted on them that crows are evil or creepy. So they were open to like, oh, look at this brilliant bird. That's cool that it is so smart.

Like they will they will scavenge like they are scavengers. So they might eat carrion. They would show up to graveyards because they might be drawn to the smell of, you know, a corpse. the smell of, you know, a corpse, but, you know, we just like basically put on them that this means that they're creepy or that they are, there's some kind of bad omen. It's just a behavior that a lot of scavenging animals will do when they, when they smell a carrion, it's not nothing malicious. Yeah. And, and crows are so adaptable, like that intelligence we talked about means they can be near human situations. And so they're kind of in every situation. Right. who's the maternal ancestor of all Kachinas. And Kachinas are descendants of the spirit world.

They're represented by figurines and by dancing. It's just a huge part of all their beliefs. There's also the Pawnee people. They had a traditional male military group called the Crow Lance Society, which is about a legend of crows protecting and reviving a lost scout who was out in the wilderness. Crows have also had one significant apocalyptic meaning among Native peoples here. There was an event that became a tragic event in the 1800s called the Ghost Dance, which could be like 100 podcasts. But the short version is that the Lakota and the

Shoshone and many other people in the plains of the US and Canada participated in an apocalyptic religious movement, believing that either an end time was coming or a supernatural event would remove white colonizers from the continent all at once or bring people back from the dead. And it's centered on dancing and large group dances. And a lot of times that involved clothing or songs featuring crows, like the Arapaho people sang about crows circling over their heads or about a whirlwind figure putting on a headdress of crow feathers. And there was something apocalyptic there. That ghost dance also turned tragic because the US military treated it as like an uprising, even though it wasn't. And the peak of that was the massacre at Wounded Knee, which was partly coming from tensions around just ghost dances happening and white colonizers being told to suppress it. Oh, my God.

Are you having a reaction to your own genocide? Well, we're going to do more genocide to respond to your reaction to the genocide. It's really quite horrifying. A hundred percent. Like there were even some ghost dance beliefs about the bison returning to various regions. And that was driven by just real bison being wiped out of regions. It's all just real stuff.

So, yeah. God, that's just, it's so gutting. But, and crows got swept up in that, too. And they're a global animal, too. I'm excited to focus on Native North America. There's also many other stories of different crow lore. There's a Japanese legend about a monster attempting to devour the sun, but then the rulers of heaven create a crow to fly into the monster's mouth and choke it and prevent it. That's great. I like that. It's sort of just like, you know what?

I'm going to pull an octopus move and just choke this thing by going into its mouth. Yeah. I wanted to high five an octopus beforehand. Like, you've got this. And then a wing high fives an arm. The octopus goes and chokes a dolphin and the crow goes and chokes a giant monster. Yeah. And the fun moral of that Japanese legend is that crows gain divine permission to eat human crops as a reward. Because you made this sacrifice, you get to come eat our food.

And that becomes an explanation of the thing where part of why crows thrive in a human dominated planet is they can eat our crops really effectively. Yeah. I mean, that's, uh, that's why we made scarecrows, which I don't think work, do they? Yeah. I couldn't find much super solid stuff other than people started doing this and it's not clearly effective yeah i don't know because i think like maybe it might work for a little bit and then the crow's gonna catch on that that's not that's that scarecrow's not going

anywhere yeah like i feel like people just got more excited about making a weird figurine, but I don't know if it actually has helped that much. But I do like, I like that idea that, you know what, like, hey, you know what, we owe these crows some of our crops, just let them have it. And then some other variety beliefs around the world, apparently medieval Muslim people believed that they were specifically allowed to kill crows while on pilgrimages to Mecca. In general, there was a belief that people should not kill animals while they're on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But crows were designated one of the five scoundrels, which are obnoxious animals that pilgrims were allowed to kill. obnoxious animals that pilgrims were allowed to kill. It was serpents, rats, mad dogs, kites, which are birds of prey, and then crows. They were allowed to do that. That feels unfair.

And then at the same time, there was a separate medieval Muslim belief that you could take the spleen of a crow, hang the spleen of the crow around your neck, and that works as a love charm. So a lot of crow beliefs, a lot going on. Yeah. The smell alone, I think, would be very attractive. Right. There's like, there's a, there's an ancient Greek method of love charm where you tie a bird. It's a, the bird is a rye neck bird. And then you like spin it around

on the string. And that's supposed to help be a love charm. So I feel like there are a lot of cultures in which we do something weird to a bird to try to get someone to fall in love with us. Yeah, maybe it's the bird monogamy thing, because there's also one belief here where crows are essentially a love bird, like a dove. There's the Hellenic period of Egyptian history where they were heavily Greek influenced. Apparently, because crows, like many birds, are monogamous, Hellenic Egyptians represented love with them. represented love with them and in particular love between the gods aries and aphrodite they would use two crows as a symbol of it yeah which is fun you can do them that way like that's the opposite of what i was taught but sure yeah i'd love to see like you release crows instead of doves at a wedding or actually do neither because you shouldn't do that but like invite you know what just invite crows to your wedding like put out a tray of peanuts for them if there's one animal you could teach to bring a wedding gift i feel like it's a crow i feel like you could get it get that across to them i bet you could probably train a crow to be the ring bearer. But equal chance that it just runs off with the ring forever and then pawns it to buy some like great crow snacks.

I mean, it's smart. Can't can't blame them. It's it's a clever economic idea. Messes up my wedding. But hey, you know. And then because the last last belief here to talk about is a few separate cultures develop stories about crows either being extremely long lived or immortal. Oh, interesting. And it seems to be based on how crows are very adaptable and are around humans a lot. And so maybe they just seemed

invincible as a result. Like crows are doing great all the time. Might because they live forever. Yeah. But I mean, their actual lifespan is, I thought around like 10 years in the wild. Is that let me sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that research and yeah, like 10, maybe 20 if they're cared for. But yeah, they don't live forever or nothing. Yeah they they have i mean they have a similar lifespan to like a dog so it's uh it's not nothing but yeah they are certainly not it's not like a pair i would imagine i could better believe like a parrot being immortal if i was if i lived in those times, because parrots do actually live to be quite long. But yeah, crows don't live, you know, that long. Yeah. And yet people, I think just from the population of them decided they're tough. In the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, there's a part where the

Lord of Death, Yama, takes the form of a crow to hide from a demon. Later in the epic, Yama transforms back and thanks crows by blessing them with imperviousness to disease and imperviousness to dying of old age. So he sets it up so they can only be actively killed. That's it. So I like that he thanks the crows for just not ratting him out. Like, thanks for not snitching on me for being cool about it. Yeah. They're explicitly not friends with demons in the Ramayana.

Yeah. Cool. Totally different. And then the other big culture of this was the Greeks. Apparently, the Greek poet Hesiod recorded a whole set of strange animal lifespan beliefs he believed that a crow can live as long as nine generations of humans so that's oddly specific and that he he was big on math here because he said a crow lives as long as nine generations of humans like theoretically if a human lifespan is 70 years that's that's 630

years of life but he just he just like nine generations that's totally arbitrary where did he where was he getting that information like uh yeah because he wouldn't live to see it so i have no idea yeah yeah yeah just like the salon of my ass exactly and then he said like not only is this true crow lives nine generations of humans he believed a stag lives four times as long as a crow great and then he believed a raven lives three times as long as a stag. So I know that's a lot of math, but if we keep assuming one human lives 70 years, that means a crow lives 630 years, and it means a raven lives 7,560 years.

You know, you gotta hand it to him. He did do some math, math completely unhinged from reality in any way, but he did do some math. It is fun that in old times, that's probably all it took. Like, well, he added numbers. Most of us can't do that. So right.

Like, that's a really big number. I can't even I wouldn't have come up with such a big number. It must be true. You try to chisel something different and your hands start turning and you give up. Like, he's right. I don't want to do this anymore. I imagine he just like he got a crow and he's like observing it to see how long it lives. And it's been like about a week and he's getting really bored.

He's like, I bet this thing lives 700 years. Chisel, publish. Great. Hitting the beach hey folks that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the world's crows are not just black feathered. Takeaway number two, crows are so intelligent they're changing our understanding of brain anatomy and our understanding of dinosaurs. Takeaway number three, crows are family-oriented birds

with two surprising reactions to death. And takeaway number four, crows hold an incredible range of meanings across world cultures, in particular in Native North America. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumBun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the strange history of crows being called murders

and crow murder. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 12 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the Cornell Bird Lab, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and also a book all about crow folklore and mythology, and that's by Boria Sachs, who is a lecturer at the University of Illinois Springfield. This is also an extra good

week to use native-land.ca because we talked about many Native peoples in especially that last takeaway about the folklore of Crows. I'm also using that native-land.ca resource to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That kind of acknowledgement feels worth doing on each episode. And hey, join the free SIF Discord. We're on there sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord.

And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 60. That's about the topic of libraries. Fun fact, a lot of world libraries are letting go of late fees. It's just counterproductive, and they can do better. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my wonderful co-host Katie Golden and her weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.