How did you manage to get started? The crows close to me are so skittish that if I try to throw a peanut at them they just fly off and never come back. I've only managed to not have that happen once.
They don’t let me get close to them, but sometimes they do fly up from behind and tap me on the back of the head to get my attention.
Also, unlike the guy up the street, I only throw out a few at a time so they have to sort of follow me to get anything.
My ultimate goal is to be able to point at someone and have the crows attack them like in Bioshock. It’ll be my thing for when society collapses. So far, however, I think our relationship is much more “let’s get some peanuts off this sucker” than “I’ll loyally follow this peanut person into battle”.
I imagine this would be a conceptual leap for their intelligence, to understand the meaning of "pointing" and to make a connection to the target, what's being pointed at. But then again, I suppose hunting dogs have achieved it - they know what to attack - so it might be possible for smart crows too.
Now that I think about it, there are cultures where people train hawks for practical hunting purposes. So taming crows may not be too far-fetched, though it might take a few generations..
We may wipe ourselves out through war and climate destruction, but the crows will survive and evolve, and CAWrchaeologists will discover our final gift to corvidkind and - hopefully - remember us fondly.
If you set out food and then watch them that means (in crow) that you are a hunter, and a lousy one, and you're trying to hunt them.
Toss out some food and "forget" it and they'll think you're such a successful hunter that you don't even need to every scrap. Someone worth knowing.
In the old days, crows would go on the hunt with us and fly over hidden game in the bush dipping a wing in a certain way to let you know where it is, then you share the meat with them. They still remember even if most of us have forgotten. ;)
It definitely seemed food based. But, observing how they interact with their (lifelong?) companion, I don’t think I’m able to perceive crow emotions.
It's a very human question.
All living things are friends (except sometimes at mealtime) because we are all part of one singular organism. The separateness and individuality of multicellular organisms is a perceptual illusion.
(This sound metaphysical, and perhaps it is, but it's very literal: all cells use the same chemical language, the same bio-molecular machinery of thought. Cf. Michael Levin's lab's work. Also "wood-wide web", etc. The way I sometimes put it is "We are Solaris". but that only makes sense if you've read the book or seen the movies...)
Anyway, all animals already trust each other. When you can understand how that's true and share that trust then you can "talk" with animals. Like Dr. Doolittle or some fairy tale princess, they will come up and hang out with you.
> It's probably mostly food based priorities to them.
Yeah, but that's the same for everybody? Don't you and your friends spend a lot of time discussing food? Cooking and eating together? "Com-pan-ions" are literally those who eat bread together: "com" is community, etc. and "pan" is bread.
Live long and prosper.
Similarly, while plenty of people pan (pun intended, on multiple levels) American multiculturalism for being seemingly limited to food, it remains evident that food is a sort of universal language - a gateway to shared understanding even among those who share nothing else in common. Cuisine is a window into cultural tradition and history, and is a leading indicator of the formation of new cultures through the intersection of existing ones. To share food is to share what makes us human.
If we discover intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I reckon this will be a key factor in whether we have any hope of ever truly understanding them and their motivations.
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Also, I clicked through your profile to your website and you mention you're a sysadmin, do you have any experience with OpenBSD?.
I sure do! It runs my web and mail servers, and on my main laptop.
(I'm starting a corporation, a little one, and I'm going to need some computers.)
In time some might become more interested in you, depending on mood, and will come closer to you.