25 Amazing Facts about Crow | Amazing Facts 4U
- There are many members of the “crow’ family. The most well-known is the carrion crow which is the most fearless. There are about 40 or so species.
- The first crows in fact appeared in Miocene, 17 million years ago, in Australia and Oceania. Crows belong in the Corvidae family, which counts over 120 species spread all over the world, excepting Antarctica.
- The common crow will usually live for about seven years, although some have lived as long as 14 years in the wild.
- Crows and ravens have been traditionally been feared as symbols of death because of their black feathers and because they are scavengers. Historically they have been associated with dead bodies, battlefields, and cemeteries.
- The smallest corvid in the world is the Dwarf Jay in Mexico (Aphelocoma nana) with 40 g (1.4 oz) weight and 21.5 cm (8.5 inches) length. The largest corvids are the Common Raven (Corvus corax) and the Thick-billed Raven (Corvus crassirostris) in Ethiopia. Both have 1.500 grams (3 lbs) weight and 65 cm (26 inches) span.
- Crows are actually very social and caring creatures, and also among the smartest animals on the planet.
- Crows are emotional animals, too. They react to hunger and invasion by vigorously vocalizing their feelings. They display happiness, anger, and sadness.
- Crows are considered song-birds and possess a deep repertoire of melodies. And, like humans, the more melodious the song, the more soothing the effects. Some crows have even been taught to recite opera.
- Just like parrots, crows can also imitate human voices.
- Crows are predators and scavengers eating practically anything. Their diet consists of various roadkill, insects, frogs, snakes, mice, corn, human fast food, even eggs, and nestlings of other birds. An adult crow needs about 11 ounces of food daily.
- The amazing Fact is that they can remember your face and different places. If you stare at a crow they will remember you next time they see you. They have the ability to describe any event in detail to one another and the information may be passed even across generations. Generations upon generations later, they still remember specific houses or areas where a member of the crow family once died and avoid them. Next time you see a group of crows, look closely. Try to remember which one is which, and see if you can tell the difference between them the next time you pass. Odds are good that you can’t find the difference but they can.
- They learn from their mistakes. Every year thousands of crows migrated through Chatham, Ontario. Until one farmer got fed up and shot one of the crows and all thousands of them changed the route.
- Crows are also really good at learning adaptive behavior. They’re known to memorize routes of garbage men to know when to get some tasty snacks. They memorize which of the truck drivers are nice enough to open cans for them!
- Crows have an excellent memory. They’re masters at stashing food in many caches, moving it sometimes two or three times, and remembering exactly where they placed it. In fact, for their size, crows have the largest brains of all birds except some parrots. Their brain-to-body ratio is equivalent to that of a chimpanzee and amazingly, not far off that of a human’s. Crows also have well-developed forebrains which are where the higher intelligence is supposed to be.
- Crows can hold a grudge. Upset them or if they think you are threatening their young and you are in trouble. They have brilliant memories and will remember you next time they see you!
- Crows are the smartest birds in the world. They are much more intelligent than any other prey birds. Besides, they are more clever, sly and tricky than a parrot.
- A test conducted in 2004 revealed that crows are cleverer than Bonobo chimpanzees. This amazingly made them the most intelligent creatures after humans, and hence, scientists named them ‘feathered apes.
- They communicate with each other in an advanced fashion. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that crows have regional dialects, meaning that crows have an actual language! Each “caw” can have a different meaning. They can warn a dangerous situation, they can mimic the sounds made by other animals, or they can even learn how to associate noises with certain events.
- Groups of crows (MURDERS) develop their own dialects, differentiating them from crows in other areas.
- The amazing fact is crows mate for life. Unless a mate is killed or severely incapacitated, crows appear to stay with the same mate year after year.
- Crows live all over the world, except for Antarctica.
- When a crow is dying, a group of other crows would flock around and attack it aggressively to death to save the agony. This is the reason why a group of crows is known as murder!
- Crows are the only creatures, excepting man and monkey, that are capable of using different tools in search of food.
- A crow has been observed while eating the nuts that initially it couldn’t crack. The ingenious bird put the nuts on a highway so that the vehicles to pass over them. The bird was so intelligent as it placed the nuts only under the wheels of smaller cars, as prior experiences proved that setting them under a bigger car would crush it and wouldn’t benefit.
- Crows have been known to carry the West Nile virus. In fact, the crows are the ones having introduced this virus in the United States of America in 1999.
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