Crows are known to give "presents" to humans they like, such as dropping small pieces of metal they picked up, or worms. Also, crows have very rich tribal behaviours going on. There's a town close to mine called Husum (in North Germany) where there's a multi-year battle going on between crows in the park. You immediately notice it by the noise, and in fact by dead crows lying on the ground.
I remember reading a story a while back about a kid that threw rocks at a tree full of crows one day when he was walking to the school bus. After that day, the crows decided that this child was the enemy. Many kids walked past the tree on the way to the school bus every day and the crows completely ignored them, but when little rock thrower walked by he'd literally get shit bombed by 20-30 crows all the way to the bus. Every single day.
I guess they give presents to people the don't like also :)
I wonder if anyone’s ever done an experiment on the social connectivity of crows, by first somehow pissing off an entire flock of crows; and then tagging a particular individual crow, and repeatedly being friendly to/appeasing that crow, and seeing how long the it takes for the message that you’re not such a jerk after all to spread among the rest of the crow population.
> Marzluff and two students wore rubber masks. He designated a caveman mask as “dangerous” and, in a deliberate gesture of civic generosity, a Dick Cheney mask as “neutral.” Researchers in the dangerous mask then trapped and banded seven crows on the university’s campus in Seattle.
> In the months that followed, the researchers and volunteers donned the masks on campus, this time walking prescribed routes and not bothering crows.
> The crows had not forgotten. They scolded people in the dangerous mask significantly more than they did before they were trapped, even when the mask was disguised with a hat or worn upside down. The neutral mask provoked little reaction.
> The effect has not only persisted, but also multiplied over the past two years. Wearing the dangerous mask on one recent walk through campus, Marzluff said, he was scolded by 47 of the 53 crows he encountered, many more than had experienced or witnessed the initial trapping.
My grandmother used to receive that of dead moles, freshly caught mice and what have you, invariably placed dead center on her pillow. She wasn't a fan of that cat before, and she didn't like it much better after. No idea why.
Cats are responsible for killing up to 25 billion animals annually and have directly contributed to the extinction of at least 33 different species.
Growing up our family cat brought us a constant stream of rabbits, birds, and moles. It is actually a problem that nobody talks about, because cats are cute.
To me it seems like everybody talks about it. I've lived in the US, Australia, and now Sweden, and almost everyone seems to have some sort of awareness of and opinion on this issue.
My girlfriend sewed a collar for her cat out of a colourful patterned fabric, and also added a fringe of metallic, very reflective material to it. The collar seems to help a lot — he's no longer able to catch any birds, which are apparently highly attuned to bright and reflective colours (though rats aren't a problem). Highly recommended.
I think this is one of the reasons cats were worshiped/revered in ancient Egypt (for 3,000 years in religious practice). They were the official protectors of the pharaohs chambers against snakes and scorpions.
I disagree. If that were the case many of those smaller species would have gone extinct ages ago due to natural predation from wild foxes and ferrets. Domesticated cats are a new issue because they often hunt with the same voracity of wild animals, but don't experience the natural pressure on their population that wild predators do because they're human pets.
If there were as many human households with domestic foxes as there are with cats, then foxes would absolutely be considered an unnaturally potent problem for wild rodent and bird species too.
One theory I heard on cats leaving dead things for you is that they think of you as a non-effective cat that needs help killin things, similar to a mom cat teaching kittens to hunt.
I’ve read this, too. Cats leave you gifts not because they’re being particularly friendly, but because they regard you as an incompetent hunter. You see the behavior in indoor-only cats as well though, say, leaving toys on your pillow, etc. In that case, I wonder if they’re reciprocating? You feed me, I feed you (kind of).
The gift-bringing behavior of domestic cats is not well understood. The "incompetent hunter" hypothesis is, well, just a hypothesis. I don't think any particular assumption of ineptitude is required on the cats' part; Occam's razor says that they're simply doing what they think is their part in keeping their family unit well-fed.
We've had more than one cat that absolutely loved playing fetch. When my wife figured out how to toss a bouncy toy from the bedroom and two rebounds to get it down the stairs to the first floor landing, it was game on for Gabriel...
And I've had a fine afternoon tossing a rubber ball that would bounce all around the living and dining room in billiard-style angles, and have an hour or more of lazy returns and rethrows.
Interesting thought! You could take folks who regularly get dead animal presents and then have their cat witness them catch a rodent or bird, and see if the presents continue. I'd enjoy that read or youtube video, haha.
My mother's cat used to carry live mice into the house and release them. He'd bat the stunned mouse around but not kill it. I would have to catch the mouse and bring it back outside. The exact opposite behavior you want from a cat.
I've been to Husum! I and my family stayed there when we visited. I'm an American, but my ancestors emigrated from that area. It's a beautiful town and we were shown the utmost hospitality by both the people there and our distant relatives that live nearby.
Crows also eat carrion and listening to a bunch of them squawk all at once definitely sounds like they're a crowd at a colosseum demanding someone get killed.
> You immediately notice it by the noise, and in fact by dead crows lying on the ground.
We're not sure they're exactly mourning but crows have "funerals" ... it might also be that they're trying to ascertain why they died to avoid a potential threat.
They also battle hawks. If I ever hear a lot of commotion (crow-motion?) I frequently see a hawk in the midst of it getting driven off by dive bombing crows.
