Saw this video on TED talks today….about the cultural adaptations of crows to human environments…interesting although I’m not a huge fan of this presenter’s criteria of intelligence. And the notion that in order for the negative attitude surrounding crows to change, they must become useful to humans. Well…boo to that for obvious reasons.
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The utilitarian undertones actually irritate me more than anything else here. At the end when he talks about mutually beneficial systems between crows and humans, I really struggle with what he means by “mutually beneficial”. He uses the example of training crows to pick up garbage after a stadium event. How is that beneficial for crows?
Another example of how humans assign value to other lives…in often perverted ways.
3 users commented in " The Intelligence of Crows "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackbackonce again… utilitarianism rears its ugly head as animism natural enemy…
once i was on the oregon coast hunting for mushrooms and i saw this crow and asked it to show me where the mushrooms where growing. He cawed at me and flew down to a patch of grass and started cawing at me some more.
i walked over to him and he didint move just looked around at all the mushrooms. I picked one and looked at it, they were’nt the right kind and i told him so.
He looked up and me and cawed gruffly, telling me… ” Well be more specific next time!”
and then flew away in a huff…
true story!
I’ve been working with crow. Fascinating creature . . .
Finally got around to watching this video - And yeah it pissed me off too! What is so hard about the concept of just living and sharing space with animals like crows and squirrels? I don’t see them as “pests” at all.
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