Reasons for crow mating with the same type

Behavior of mating with raven type humans is very rare and may be the way they respond to potential dangers.

Crows are birds with high social behavior and they continue to have close relationships after death. Live crows often gather and make loud noise near the corpses, according to Live Science. Some even mate with corpses.

Crows are not the only species with this strange behavior. Researchers have encountered many similar examples in different animals from ducks to dolphins when an individual tries to mate with a dead member of the same species. But they cannot conclude how popular this behavior is and how difficult it is to explain why the animal does so.

However, the two scientists may have found the answer when studying American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) . They conducted the first study of the behavior of mating with corpses through observation and recording. Their aim is to determine whether this behavior occurs frequently, thus better understanding the meaning of behavior, according to research leader Kaeli Swift. Swift's group published the July 16 research results in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Swift, a graduate student at the University of Washington's School of Environmental and Forestry Science (UW), first observed unusual mating behavior when filming a document about the rite of funeral rites in 2015. At that time, she and John Marzluff, professor of wildlife studies at UW, is investigating the reaction of crows when he detects fellow corpses. This cry signals the potential danger to living crows. The crow came close to the body, climbed up and began to move back and forth in a very recognizable way, Swift said.

In the previous study of how crow gathered and communicated around corpses, Swift and Marzluff discovered that they used the same corpses to learn and avoid potential risks. This makes it difficult to understand the behavior of mating with corpses. If dead crows are a dangerous signal, why does the crow live close to it? "Being close to corpses can make them susceptible to diseases, parasites or scavengers , " Swift said.

Crows mated with corpses of the same type.(Photo: Kaeli Swift).

With the new study, Swift's team conducted a series of experiments in four cities in Washington state, examining 308 pairs of wild crows. They let the crows come into contact with carefully arranged stuffed crows and other animals such as pigeons and squirrels. They want to see if the crows share the same reaction with dead animals or they act separately from their species.

Swift and her colleagues found the crows more likely to sound alert when they saw their corpses. Crows have encountered a homosexual body about 25% of the time, but only 4% of the time encounters mating behavior, proving affectionate corpse is not common behavior .

In addition to sexual reactions, the crow rises to the corpse, revealing ferocious behavior. It is possible that the pressure in the breeding season, combined with the moment of seeing the corpses, has confused some individuals, so they react to corpses through aggression and mating.