Latest news with #corvids
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Why have crows been attacking people in Nottinghamshire?
"All of a sudden I had this real thud on my head... I thought, quite scarily, 'perhaps I'm being attacked'. I do Tai Chi, so I was ready to go on the defensive."Jane Phillips is recalling the moment a crow swooped down and injured her head when she was walking along a footpath in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, on 3 June."I put my hand up and unfortunately it was covered with blood, and I could feel it running down my neck, down my T-shirt," she said."I didn't see them coming because they came from the back and the side." Despite not seeing the crow attacking, she quickly realised what was 74-year-old said: "I looked up and there was a couple of crows in the air, making this loud noise, just like, 'caw caw'." The wound to Jane's head - thought to have been caused by a claw rather than a beak - was so deep it needed posted about it on a community Facebook page to warn other people living in Stapleford, and quickly realised her experience was not unique."I'm just amazed not only by the number of people who were grateful for my post, but also several people are saying this is happening a lot," said Jane."It never occurred to me. You see the crows around but I was never aware that they could be a threat." In Arnold, about nine miles from Stapleford, Natalie Cater and her neighbours are all too aware that crows can be a heard about people being dive-bombed, where birds swoop down steeply, by corvids in the Spinningdale area last year, and the same has been happening during this year's nesting 29-year-old was walking to the shops on 30 May when she was chased and scratched."It was quite scary to be honest with you," she said."I heard two really loud squawks, and then behind me came two crows, so I ducked because they tried to go for my head, and then I carried on walking."Then I heard it again but there were three coming for me this time. I seemed to notice they were in packs."Then they tried to go for my head again and they managed to scratch it, so I legged it, and then they followed me. They were swooping behind me following me."She said she was glad her baby son was at home with his dad at the time. Elsewhere in Nottinghamshire, staff members at the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) were warned about an "aggressive" crow near to one of the hospital entrances last bird, nicknamed Russell Crow, was reportedly swooping down and pecking people on the it isn't just Nottinghamshire. People across the country have reported numerous crow attacks in recent years - including in Essex, Teesside, Dorset and why does this keep happening? "Crows are seen as harbingers of doom, they are seen as birds of foreboding and birds of death," said Dr Rob Lambert, an environment academic at the University of Nottingham."Battle scenes in films like Braveheart, and Game of Thrones, often have dead people being pecked by crows after the battle, and Shakespeare wrote about crows, and they are part of our cultural literary story, and much of that presentation is negative in that crows are seen as somehow evil birds."But Dr Lambert, who is also vice-president of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, believes crows do not deserve their bad considers the incidents in Arnold and Stapleford to be "conflicts" rather than "attacks" and said they were a result of crows moving to urban areas to escape persecution in rural areas."We have for hundreds of years persecuted crows in agricultural areas. They are seen to impact on crops, they are seen to impact on livestock," said Dr Lambert."They have moved into urban areas and their behaviours have changed over decades, and they have become more confident and more ebullient, more confrontational than their rural cousins, who still live under this fear of persecution and fear of this idea of being seen as pests and vermin." He said there were a number of species of crows in the UK, but those typically seen in urban areas were carrion crows and seeing footage of the crows that have been chasing people in Arnold, Dr Lambert identified them as carrion crows."The majority of these cases are simply crows defending territory, defending the food source, defending a nest site, defending fledged young, and they are instinctively reacting to any invasion into that space, and I would say that's particularly more relevant with people with dogs," Dr Lambert said."They are not coordinated dive-bombing attacks, they are simply a scare tactic that these birds are using to chivvy us away from an area that they perceive to be their territory."And Dr Lambert has bad news for anyone with ornithophobia - a fear of birds - conflicts like these are likely to become more common in future."As we pave over the countryside, and as we change farming, and as climate shifts, birds are moving," he said."I think there will be instances of conflict between people and crows for decades to come."It's how we manage those conflicts, and it's how we avoid blaming the birds, and look at some of our behaviours, and look at some of our impacts on the wider countryside that are shifting and changing the maps of species across the country." Does Dr Lambert have any advice for people worried about conflicts with crows?"I think my advice would be to be very aware that there are nesting crows, then there will be young birds on the wing," he said."Feel free to carry a stick slightly higher above your head because they will strike for that, and be aware often if you're walking with dogs it might be the dog the crows are targeting, not yourself."Dr Lambert said crows were very intelligent, and there were many cases of people befriending them and being brought fact, clerical officer Melony Lockhart managed to form a bond with the QMC's "aggressive" crow by feeding it, and in return the crow brought her the gift of a shiny chocolate in Stapleford, Jane is still healing from her head injury, but she does not hold a grudge against the crow responsible."I'm a fan of nature," she said."It made me aware perhaps we need to learn a little bit more to protect them, because they were protecting their young."
The Independent
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Scientists discover crows can plan ahead and understand other minds in groundbreaking new study
Many of us as children may have wondered what's going on inside the mind of an animal – what are they thinking and feeling? Most animal researchers study science because of their fascination with animals, but for a long time scientific norms made it impossible to even raise the question of animal consciousness without losing scientific credibility. Fortunately, those days have ended, thanks in large part to pioneering work by scientists such as Donald Griffin, who argued from the 1980s to his death in 2003 that animal minds should be a topic for scientific study. We are philosophers who study consciousness, and in our recent research we worked with other scientists to explore what the world might be like from the point of view of corvids, the family of birds that includes ravens, crows, jays and magpies. 'Birdbrain' used to be a common insult but corvids have such surprising intelligence that they are sometimes described by scientists and journalists as 'feathered apes'. But we wanted to go beyond intelligence. To do this we examined five dimensions of their experience by combing through studies on their behaviour, cognition, brains, emotions and consciousness. Corvids' eyes have incredibly sharp resolution that allows them to navigate while flying at high speeds and to find potential sources of food. Their hearing is excellent, perhaps unsurprising for songbirds, allowing them to even distinguish reliable from unreliable group members by assessing and remembering their alert calls. They also have a good sense of smell, which they use to help them find nuts and other food they have hidden. Unfortunately, we do not know how their smell compares to a lot of other animals, because there are not enough studies on corvids' sense of smell yet. Emotional lives Corvids show cognitive biases, similar to humans. They have negative moods and show signs of pessimism after observing similar states in others. But they also show positive moods after successfully using tools – just like humans. And they can also show neophobia – wariness of new objects. Even if you come with treats to give them, corvids are reluctant to fly close to someone they haven't met before, but are confident with humans they know well – another common human trait. It is common for people to only attribute emotional lives to mammals, but corvids show that we should study the emotions of birds in more detail. Integrated experiences We humans have one stream of consciousness. But birds lack a corpus callosum, the structure that connects the two brain hemispheres in us and other mammals. Their brain halves show a lot of division of labour, such as using their different eyes to focus on different tasks. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that their experience is split into two selves – it could suggest a kind of partial unity different from our own. Perhaps their consciousness is more like split-brain human patients who have had their corpus callosum cut to reduce the effects of seizures. When two pictures are presented in their respective left and right visual fields, these people will draw what they see on the left side with their left hand, whereas they will verbally describe what is on the right, giving the appearance of two selves in one body. Corvids show remarkable abilities in their sense of self across time. Because they often hide food (scientists call this caching), they can remember not just where they hid food, but also what kind of food it was and how long ago they hid it – which is relevant for more perishable foods such as insects, compared to longer-lasting nuts. Here their memory far outstrips our own or, for that matter, most other animals when it comes to hiding objects, with some corvids caching and remembering over a thousand food items in a month for later consumption. No human would be able to remember that many hiding spots. Corvids can even plan, collecting and storing a tool such as a spoon for future use. A rich sense of self They not only recognise themselves in mirrors, but also understand other minds. Research has shown corvids go back to remove cached food and hide it elsewhere if they know they have been observed – but only if they have stolen from others in the past. Male jays will watch the feeding behaviour of a female they want to court, so they can bring their preferred food. Even more solitary corvids, such as ravens, seem to have well-developed social skills, which scientists used to think were largely restricted to mammals. In all of this, there is still a great deal of uncertainty. Learning about the minds of other animals requires a great deal of inference from sparse and often ambiguous data. But we believe that there is scientific evidence for rich conscious experiences in corvids. For most species, it is a lack of research, not a lack of capacity, that keeps us silent on what their subjective experiences are like. This research also has implications for corvid welfare. Understanding what the world is like for an animal means understanding what feels good and bad for them. Their good memories may mean they suffer longer from a negative experience, neophobia will mean novel objects should be introduced slowly, their social abilities mean they should be housed in groups. Giving them tools could allow them enriching experiences. All this should be taken into account when deciding how to care for these birds when kept in cavity, and how to minimise welfare risks in other interactions with them.
