The mystery of the phenomenon

The crow has a collective behavior that cries and mourns, but no one has explained this.

Successfully decoding the phenomenon of "crowds"

The crow has a very special and mysterious behavior: every time a crow dies, the crow will gather around it and begin to "mourn", creating a "mob".

Scientists have been observing this phenomenon for a long time, but until recently it was possible to explain why the crow did so.That's because they want to find out if there's something dangerous in their living area.

Crows gather when people die

According to Kaeli Swift, head of research at the University of Washington: "The phenomenon of crows has been observed for a long time, but we don't understand why they can do that."

To solve the mystery, Swift's team used stuffed birds to impersonate dead crows in areas with many crows.

Swift shared: 'The study consists of 3 dangerous contexts: a masked person holding a corpses; a person standing next to a falconing falcon; a man standing next to the falcon is parked at the same crows' The mask is used to check if the crow can remember the human face, because the participants are different.

As a result, 96% of cases produce the same reaction.

Accordingly, when a crow discovers an unusual thing, it will shout loudly, attracting 5-11 other children in the neighborhood. They will gather for about 10-20 minutes, crying bitterly.

Swift said: 'Crows react the most in the third case, when they see people, falcons and corpses. This shows that crows will become more sensitive when crows are found with familiar enemies '.

Besides, the study also showed that crows have the ability to remember people's faces excellently and their memorization time can reach . for years.

Swift was surprised to find that the crow learned to recognize people standing by the falcon based on their masks. The evidence is that when these masked people enter the area, the crows have no reaction.

In a previous study of the raven by Dr. John Marzluff of Washington University, scientists used masks during trapping at five different locations.

Crow can recognize "dangerous faces".

However, after 5 years since the trapping stopped, the crows still remember the 'dangerous faces' . The evidence is that people wearing 'dangerous masks' when entering the area are all cried loudly, to alert their fellow humans, and to drive away the enemy.