

Aesop's Fable - or fact? Meet the world's cleverest bird - wallflower
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6753086.ece

======
pj
Crows commute into urban areas just like humans. This is just one example of
the many urban areas with commuting crows. I've seen them do it in Vancouver,
BC as well: <http://www.prattmuseum.org/kachemak/survived/crows.html>

They use tools a lot. They can be trained to operate vending machines to get
food out by exchanging them for coins they find on the street:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iihdP3b6LXw>

They use cars to crack nuts and traffic lights to know when it is safe to go
get the meat out of the nut: [http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/09/video-crow-
uses-oncoming-...](http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/09/video-crow-uses-
oncoming-traffic-to-prepare-food/)

I think that a good portion of the population in cities around the world wants
to cull the crows is a sad metaphor for the state of humanity. For a species
that wants to find intelligence somewhere in the world, that wants to relate
to and communicate with others to avoid loneliness to want to erradicate one
of the few examples of _great_ intelligence outside our own species is a
metaphor for the erradication of intelligence _within_ our own species as
well. In times of war, philosophers are the first to be killed. Science is
losing in our American class rooms. Teachers are paid a pittance while
athletes are paid millions.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1337698/Plan-to-
cull-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1337698/Plan-to-cull-
scavenging-crows-makes-feathers-fly.html)

This thread is interesting because these people want to cull the crows because
they interfere with song birds:
[http://www.birding.bc.ca/community/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2...](http://www.birding.bc.ca/community/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2166)
Another metaphor for our society more interested in pursuing entertainment in
the form of sports or music or hollywood at the expense of engineering,
science and math.

And others want to kill them because they wake them up!
[http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/story.html?id=7d72...](http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/story.html?id=7d728b16-09bb-42e0-98ca-
adc9178176eb)

How poetic: ignorance is bliss.

~~~
mynameishere
The quote is, "Truth is the first casualty of war." Actually, various members
of the standing army are the first to be killed. And people dislike crows for
their particularly stupid qualities, ie, cawing endlessly for no reason, or
their destructiveness. The finest quality of the bird isn't its intelligence
but its habit of eating dead animals on roadsides.

Crows, while intelligent birds, are complete idiots compared to humans.
Songbirds, by contrast, are better composers and better looking than 99
percent of humans. It comes down to that, I think.

