Nature’s wonders .. Crows mourn their dead

CROWS are known to behave strangely around their dead: they gather around and squawk loudly nearby.

The idea that it is part of some sort of funeral ritual has often been proposed.

But what they are actually doing has largely remained a mystery, as scientists had little to rely on except anecdotal evidence of such behaviour.

A team has now set out to unpick just why crows act so attentively around their fallen brethren.

To do so, they set up an innovative experiment, capitalising on the knowledge that crows do not forget a threatening face.

This was discovered from earlier research.

To prevent any real life harassment from crows, the face they used was not a real one but a rather realistic latex mask covering their real face.

Using a similar disguise, researchers introduced a lone mask-clad individual to an area where the crows knew to expect a tasty treat from the experimenter, Kaeli Swift, of the University of Washington.

They would be holding a dead crow, palms outstretched like you might hold a plate of hors d’oeuvre.

By bringing treats, she played good cop.

But the masked individual played bad cop, arriving on the scene holding up a dead crow. This sinister individual would remain in place for 30 minutes.

“They would be holding a dead crow, not violently, not reenacting a death scene, just holding it like they were picking it up to throw it in rubbish, palms outstretched like you might hold a plate of hors d’oeuvre.”

On the first day this masked person appeared, the crows avoided the food Swift had laid out altogether.

Instead they engaged in scolding and mobbing behaviours, when crows assemble in large groups to appear threatening to potential predators.

When the masked person returned the next day, even without a dead crow, they still avoided the food.

These results show that crows will avoid an area or thing that is deemed dangerous to their own species.

In other words, they know what death is and know to fear it.

“It tells us that crows view death, at least in part, as a ‘teachable moment’ to borrow an anthropomorphic phrase. It’s a signal of danger and danger is something to be avoided,” explains Swift.

And this fear of a potential deadly situation stays with them. Even six weeks later more than a third of 65 pairs of crows continued to respond this way.

The study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, was another in the line of research trying to better understand how animals respond to their dead.

Crows are now the latest in the small group of animals that are known to recognise, or perhaps even mourn, their dead. Elephants, giraffes, chimpanzees and several other corvid species are also known to loiter near recently deceased mates.

– BBC/Earth

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