Birds maintain grudges longer than people as boffins discover proof of ‘revenge crows’
Crows can hold grudges for 17 years against people who upset or threaten them.
Bird boffs say the birds are either incapable of or unwilling to let go of memories of being threatened. Experts insist crows use their alarmingly good minds to spend years getting revenge on anyone – or anything – that has dared wrong them.
Their revenge missions have led residents of some cities to start logging attacks from furious crows. Professor John Marzluff, an environmental scientist at the University of Washington, said he gathered proof of “revenge crows” after subjecting the birds to an unpleasant Halloween-style incident in 2006 to see how they would react.
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The university boff stuck on an ogre mask and captured seven crows in a net, attaching identification bands to the birds. He rapidly set them free unharmed, but the egghead said mobs of the birds left traumatised by being left behind would target him if they saw him wearing the same costume around campus.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Prof Marzluff said: “It appears that birds have a region of their brain that is analogous to the amygdala of mammals… the region of the vertebrate brain where negative associations are stored as memories. Birds are very, very keen at noting our actions… that they pay so much attention to people has been one of the most surprising things to me in my work with them.”
On one occasion the Prof was “scolded” by 47 of 53 crows he encountered after his experiment. He noticed they were still targeting him seven years later, and it was only from 2013 onwards the number of aggressive “caws” directed at him started to fall.
It was only during one walk in September last year – 17 years after his experiment – no scolding calls were logged. The Prof is now gearing up to publish data from his study into the ‘gangster’ crows.
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