Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

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My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before.

We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined up on the power lines waiting for their free meal.

But it gets better. One of my kids loves watching the birds, so we go out there and do so a lot. Sometimes we throw them some crackers etc. for free entertainment.

We were outside one day and someone walked by pretty close to us. They didn't pose any (recognizable) threat, but apparently the crows thought we were in some sort of danger because several swooped down and attacked the person walking by. They were totally fine after the crow mauling, but I did read that crows do view people as friend and foe, depending on what they might be trying to protect.

This makes me wonder if this kind of stalking is the reason behind the association of ravens with war? Many cultures have mythologies of ravens protecting warriors in battle. Maybe they literally followed armies in the past, scavenging food, and attacking the foes of the army.

I understand that they eat carrion, hence their association with the dead. But that wouldn't explain the stories like this:

> According to legend, prior to one battle a gigantic Gallic warrior challenged any Roman to single combat, and Valerius, who asked for and gained the consul’s permission, accepted. As they approached each other, a raven settled on Valerius’ helmet and it distracted the enemy's attention by flying at his face, allowing Valerius to kill the enemy Gaul.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Valerius_Corvus#Early_c...

Easy food off corpses is my thought. Humans are very soft and tender if they aren't swinging at you.

I've seen several media instances of crows eating the dead.

Trail running one winter I would often see a coyote and a crow hanging out and sometimes playing together. Crows sometimes will team up with larger predators to hunt. The crow can survey a larger area to spot prey, and the larger predator has the ability to kill it.

That's amazing.

I used to swim with this eel and a bass(?) sometimes one summer. The eel would swim near the bottom and the bass would swim above him a foot or two. I imagine the eel would flush out prey the bass would eat. I'm not sure if the eel got anything out of the deal though.

Crows, being social animals, have a concept of friend already.

They also have a concept of foe. Crows are well-documented to wage war against red hawks (buzzards across the pond), and this goes further than just bickering over a tasty bit of carrion: they will actively gang up on red hawks whenever they see them. Which is risky business, red hawks being larger, with sharper beaks and talons.

It's pretty neat that they can extend those concepts to distinct humans!

I've seen crows and ravens chase away buzzards, ospreys and eagles. My family keeps chickens, and the corvids like to go into the coop to eat. Not a big deal since they get plenty of food, but my uncles don't like them and think they are too noisy. Once there was a dead raven in the coop, it must have got stuck and somehow hurt itself. My uncle nailed it on a pole; I thought it was horrible and removed it. That same week, one chicken was killed by a buzzard. I figure the ravens let it happen, so I made a deal with my mother to give offerings to the ravens and crows, entrails when we kill a chicken and such, to ensure they know that they have friends as well, and that it's welcome if they chase away the birds of prey. I always greet the ravens when they fly by. Magnificent birds.

A couple days ago I was sitting on my porch and heard an awful racket nearby, some crows were screaming and I didn't know why, until I saw the hawk sitting in the tallest tree around. They didn't let up for hours until it left.

Years ago, we had a dead crow in our yard. We think our dog did it, but we didn't see. My wife and I dealt with it, but had a lot of crow onlookers. They were pissed.

For the next year or so, every time either my wife or I would walk out the door, if crows were in the vicinity they would sound an alarm until they were happy we weren't going to attack them. They never seemed to do that for the dog, though.

That’s called “being framed” ;)

Our dog is definitely smart enough to try and pull a stunt like that.

This is a surprisingly well-documented phenomena: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151003-anima...

Neat! I wonder if a biologist might describe this type of behaviour (attacking perceived threats to the creature that produces your renewable food source) as primitive agriculture.

Maybe the crows were just tending to your children like livestock? ;)

People talk about ants practicing agriculture, but sounds like maybe these crows are making a foray into it as well :)

That actually does make me wonder if crows could be trained to engage in conventional forms of agriculture. Can they learn to plant a seed and wait for it to grow into a source of many seeds? Are they capable of thinking ahead on those sorts of timescales?

It is possible that there was an attribute of that person that crows recognized as dangerous: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/grudge-holding...

Not only that, but crows can remember human faces and train other crows to treat that face as friend or foe.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.201...

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