Hitchcockian Crows Spread the Word About Unkind Humans | Crows Learn Dangerous Faces | Animal Intelligence | LiveScience
An American crow.
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The common crow knows when you're out to get him — and he's likely to teach his friends and family to watch out for you, a new study finds.
In results that can only be described as Hitchcockian, researchers in Seattle who trapped and banded crows for five years found that those birds don't forget a face. Even after going for a year without seeing the threatening human, the crows would scold the person on sight, cackling, swooping and dive-bombing in mobs of 30 or more.
"Most of the birds that are scolding us are not the ones we captured," said study researcher John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington and an occasional victim of crow attacks. "It's likely that they're learning [...]
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