A couple of years ago, on the Massachusetts Turnpike near Boston, they were finding large numbers of dead crows by the side of the road, which at the time, made them very concerned about Avian Flu.
The tests came back negative, so they were really puzzled, trying to figure out why all these dead crows were appearing on the side of this very busy highway. They spent something like $100K to bring in some bird specialists to study the issue (which made me crazy-who spends that kind of money on a damned bird study!) and when they did autopsies on the carcasses, they found a very curious thing: crows don’t normally get hit by cars, but they found that all of them had evidence of impact trauma and automobile paint on them.
So they spent several days observing crows in the area, and they figured out what it was. They observed that crows feeding on carrion in the road depend on other crows to stand watch off to the side and sound an alarm when a vehicle approaches.
Time after time, when a sedan approached, the crow on the side not eating would call out with a loud “Caaaah!” and the bird in the road would fly out of the way. But the eighteen wheelers would careen right into the feeding crow with no warning, and kill it. Apparently, crows in Boston knew how to say “Caaaah!” but couldn’t figure out how to say “Truck!”
(ducks)
Great story-———I guess our MA crows are libs and haven’t quite figured things out yet.
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Good one. Lol!
;>)