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A cheeky experiment was done to prove this back in the aughts:

https://www.science.org/content/article/caveman-or-dick-chen...

"In a creative experiment that relied on rubber masks of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other distinctive mugs, researchers have shown that American crows have an uncanny ability to pick a familiar human face out of a crowd."

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I vaguely remember a doco (about a study?) where they established similar fear in crows using similar masks. They tracked these crows, waited for them to breed, and tested how the babies responded. Saw this over a decade ago now I'd guess, so my memory is fuzzy, but IIRC the takeaway was that the parent crows were able to communicate the knowledge to their offspring that these masks were bad news.

I remember that story from the documentary called 'A Murder of Crows'.

Study in question: https://sci-hub.st/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2009....

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