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Comment by kulahan | Hacker News Reader

Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary. The bird saved in this story, if it has offspring, will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human. At the very least, there's lots of research into this topic. I can't speak to the others, sorry.

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> Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary.

Not that unique. My grandfather was a forester, his favourite time passing was to whistle back bird's song, changing only a little bit at a time, turning it slowly into something totally different. The changed song was passed to other birds and offsprings no probs.

The result was quite hilarious, you went to the primeval woods and you could hear wild birds singing the Für Elise... I bet it freaked out ornithologists!

(My granddad died about 30 years ago, sadly the bird "dialect" has vanished since, but I still have some old tapes in the attic.)

This is an absolutely beautiful story! My mother always whistles back at the birds, but mostly just tries to imitate their songs. But she used to play "Für Elise" on the piano when I was a child :)

Please digitize and post some of these recordings!

Omg please

Not surprising it died out, and probably quickly. Birds trained to sing Fur Elise would probably be at a disadvantage in attracting a mate imprinted on a more typical song.

Restoring avian song culture is an important part of conservation.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/380/1925/202...

Yes! This is a heartwarming story. But the opposite is true. If you happen to piss off a crow, your life will become very difficult. You might as well move towns.

That makes me wonder: If you happened to piss them off, is there a way to appease them again sort of by redeeming yourself and thereby amend the diplomatic relationship?

I feel like there's gotta be

Have a friend, in a mask, kidnap one of the crows. Then you appear, and set it free, and give it cookies. (And your friend stops using the mask.)

This makes the assumption that crows can identify people only by the face. It's quite likely they could recognise something else.

That is not so much an assumption as a conclusion, backed up by research:

https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-individ...

https://crowlingo.org/journal/marzluff-mask-experiments-expl...

I think the person meant that it might not be for the mask-wearer. They might be targeted by crows even when the mask comes off because the crows might still recognize them from their walking style or body odor or voice etc.

They explicitly are not able to recognize once the mask comes off. That’s the point.

That's why you use your friend!

Or even better: use a (visiting) tourist.

Mostly face - at least crows. There were experiments done with people in mask, and when they remove the mask - crows would no longer recognize them

There was a story a few years back about a woman who did that. She was a target, so she tried leaving treats, and ended up converting one of the crows to her side and it then came to her defense against other birds.

So we need to research if we can apologize to crows.

Here in Australia, magpies do something similar but in a bad way. During nesting season they'll swoop you, remember your face, and keep targeting you. My daughter got attacked two weeks ago.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-30/magpie-swooping-seaso...

Yeah this happened to me when I was around 12 years old on my way to school. I spotted the crow one day in the middle of the road and thought it was a raven because it was so big for a crow. Then a car came and I guess it thought I attacked it with the car so it got pissed. Since that day it started attacking me every day as I went to school for about 1-2 years. Nothing too serious though but I had to be on my guard, it would literally position itself right where the sun was so I couldn't really see when it would strike at me if it did - most of the time it just screamed at me 5 meters away.

When our cat was thirsty, he used to go into our shower unit and start knocking bottles of shampoo over until we put the shower head down low and turned it on gently so he could have a drink.

Our dog has started doing the same, from watching the cat.

> will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human

I like to think the crows from my neighborhood think I'm their cat food god.

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