Crows: The Most Intelligent and Misunderstood Birds

 According to BBC, crows have the ability to understand and recognize familiar human speech and bird calls from other species. It is common knowledge that crows are extremely intelligent and analytical birds, as they have already been able to adapt to many different surroundings, from cities to rural towns. Some crows are even capable of mimicking speech patterns. Researchers wanted to find out just how well crows could recognize sounds, so they studied eight crows and how they reacted to five recordings of the word "Hey" from voices of people that had spent time with them and five recordings of the same word from voices of people that had never even spent a minute with the birds. The crows reacted much more cautiously toward the unfamiliar voices, as humans tend to harm crows. This act of harming crows extends all the way to Tokyo, Japan. As much as I may love Japan and Crows, the two do not have the same mutual feeling for each other. In 2000, there were 21,000 crows flocking to Tokyo, but the number kept on growing. The citizens said that crows would attack pedestrians just simply walking on the streets. Some citizens remain kind to the black feathered friends, but others chase them, trap them, and there is even talk of eating the crows. Actually, this latter treatment of the animals may be the reason for the attacks on the people of Tokyo. A study done in 2012 shows that crows can not only remember a person's face, but they also hold grudges, just as humans do. Seattle researchers found that captured crows can remember a captor's face, even after years of not seeing that face. When the crows' menace was reintroduced to them, they taunted and attacked him, suggesting that the crows still hated their captor. While crows may have an association with death and darkness and are seen as nothing more than a pest to some, but the truth is that crows are very intelligent and magnificent creatures.