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Comment by astannard | Hacker News Reader

When I was a teenager I found a baby crow that had been attacked by something and was in a bad state. I took it home looked after it for a month or so feeding it on cat food and keeping it in a garage. Maybe not the best move but I was a teenager. It grew up and lived in the wild in the end but would sometime fly down and land on my shoulder as I walked to the shops etc. I would stick it on a post box buy a few things and it would hop back on my shoulder when I came out. Made me feel quite badass ;)

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Crows are extremely intelligent and they live quite a long time. When I was a kid I went on a vacation with my family to a cabin by a lake. A man living in the neighborhood had a pet crow. The crow would get cosy around our dining table that was outside trying to grab some food, so my mother chased it away once. After that for the next 2 weeks we stayed there the crow would fly over every day and take a shit on my mother's laundry. There were 5 people in the family, but the crow would always pick my mother's clothes. This is a true story.

It's interesting that this story sounds far-fetched but if you told it about a chimp no one would bat an eye.

I think we can accept how intelligent chimps are more easily because we can understand their body language and facial expressions. Even dolphins and dogs are more relatable.

That is hilarious, I wonder if crows have a sense of humour, sounds like they like toilet humour?

Whenever this topic comes up I always find myself thinking "why not?"

We know humans are animals, and as far as we can tell, toilet humor is universal across cultures. Animals aren't as intelligent as humans, sure--but does anyone think that poop jokes require a lot of intelligence to get?

I feel like the history of studying animal cognition can be thought of as long process of us just getting over how special and unique we think we are. First it was problem-solving vs. pre-programmed instincts, then it was "man, the tool user", then it was language, and now sense of humor? Well why not?

I wanna say 'we think'* parrots have a sense of humor and I'm pretty sure we attribute 'play' as a motive for various crow behaviors so it seems pretty reasonable to assume they might have something we'd recognize as a sense of humor.

* 'we think' as in various pop-sci articles, so obviously apply your necessary skepticism filters.

Not sure if humor or legitimate vengeance. In a group it's important to punish individuals infringing on your sense of entitlement ;)

Anyway, it's impressive that the bird managed to connect so many dots correctly and creatively play an inter-species conflict.

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