Understanding the Mind
Amazing Crows
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Jenny Odell began with a few peanuts left untouched on her apartment balcony. In How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, a wary crow eventually approached, returned, and brought its young. Doug places that encounter beside crows’ remarkable abilities: recognizing human faces, making tools, teaching their offspring whom to trust, and remembering for years the people who have displeased them.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
This post is based on content taken from “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny O’Dell. Appreciating nature and learning about our fellow creatures is important to a healthy memory.
Crows are amazing indeed. They’re highly intelligent and can recognize and remember human faces. They have been documented making and using tools in the wild. They teach their children to distinguish between “good” and “bad” humans. Good humans are those who feed them and bad humans are those who try to catch them or otherwise displease them. They can hold grudges for years.
Jenny O’Dell started leaving a few peanuts out on the balcony of her apartment. For a long time the peanuts remained undisturbed. Occasionally one peanut would be missing. Then a couple of times she saw a crow come by and swipe a peanut, but the crow would quickly fly away. After a while the crows began hanging out on a nearby telephone wire. One crow started coming every day around the time that Ms. O’Dell was eating breakfast, would sit exactly where she could see it from the kitchen table, and it would caw to make her come out on the balcony with a peanut. One day this crow brought its kid, which she knew was his kid because the big one would groom the smaller one and because the smaller one had an undeveloped, chicken-like squawk. She named them Crow and Crowson.
She soon discovered that Crow and Crowson preferred it when she threw peanuts off the balcony so they could do fancy dives off the telephone line. They’d do twists, barrel, rolls, and loops, which she made slow-motion videos of with the obsessiveness of a proud parent. Sometimes, they wouldn’t want any more peanuts and would just sit there and stare at her.
This is a very interesting story of how Crows managed to develop a relationship with a human, and train her to do what they wanted to foster their recreational activities.