Crows, They're Up To Something But We're Not Clever Enough To Work Out What

A fascinating but slightly unnerving piece on '6 Ways Crows Are Smarter Than You Think' uncovers these facts :

* Not only can crows recognise human faces, they can hold grudges against the person who owns that face

* Not only can crows communicate detailed information to each other in all that cawing, they can do so to conspire, to plot and plan.

* Crows have regional accents, and recognise where another crow is from by the sounds of their caws.

* Half a million crows descended on a small, farming town. There was a plan to kill and bag a few hundred thousand of them. One crow was shot, and the rest communicated with each other, within minutes, to sound a warning to fly high enough to avoid the guns.

* Crows pass down memories and information to next generations about places to avoid because one crow had been shot there. And it's not a general area, they avoid specific houses where grandpa crow was shot dead all those years ago.

* Crows understand the natural laws of water displacement.

* They can look at a piece of wire and work out if they bend the end into a hook they can use it to pull something tasty that was out of reach into beak range.

* Not only do crows know how to make tools, they know how to make tools which can be used to make more tools.

* Crows can remember the days garbage trucks visit a neighbourhood, and the route they take.

* The smart little fuckers can also learn the pattern and timing of traffic lights.

Amazing.

Lots More Crow Brilliance Here

Okay, Elephants might not be completely terrified of mice, but they certainly do seem to be afraid of them :



But are the Mythbusters wrong? Are elephants really afraid of mice, in the way some humans freak out when they see a spider scurrying towards them?

Or are these elephants in fact purposely trying to avoid stepping on them? Maybe they've had enough experience stepping on small animals as youngsters to not want to get squished rodent between their toes.

Also, it must not be forgotten, that elephants use their trunks like we use our hands. When they're looking around for fruit on a forest floor, their trunks are snuffling around through undergrowth and grass.

It might simply be they know enough to avoid small darting things because snakes, and some rodents, would bite at a trunk that accidentally finds them amongst the fruit and leaf litter around the base of tree..

Or maybe there's simply a kind of heeby-jeebies terror of small animals running up the inside of their trunks and getting caught.

Whatever the reason, the idea proposed by MythBusters that elephants are irrationally scared of mice is ridiculous.

Considering the (however small in scale) level of threat posed by rodents, spiders, snakes to a snuffling trunk, it makes sense that elephants would learn over the years to rear back and step cautiously around a quick moving something they've only just seen or become aware of.

Elephants can hardly be compared to a man or woman standing on a chair shrieking insanely because there's a mouse, spider or monster cockroach darting around the floor.

Elephants have far more dignity than that.