--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote: > > On 01/14/2012 10:49 AM, curtisdeltablues wrote: > > My day just got hijacked by crows! > > > > For your mind; > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgCQj-sgqk&feature=related > > Good, you found that one and then there is this one where the crow > repeatedly uses an order of tools to get at the food: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ofjo26O0z_o > <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ofjo26O0z_o> > > > For your heart: My Conure could play ball like this, and with > > one of those golf balls with holes, he could throw it to me. > > Check out what a good dog this is and how gently he backs the > > crow off when it is HIS turn for the ball! > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw&feature=related > > One wonders if the guy would have left the crow alone after the > ball went behind the folded chair leaning against the wall that > it would have found a tool to dig it out. > > There's a lot of lore about crows in Asian philosophy.
I completely forget which of those nature/science TV shows I saw it on, but there was a fascinating vignette about crows in one of them about how animals self-medicate. The show made a compelling case for animals having an innate instinct to...uh...get high. There are any number of animal species on this rock who like to toke up on hallucinogens, and the show provided footage of them doing so, from monkeys getting drunk to (literally) lions and gazelles eating the same psychedelic plant and then (literally) "lying down together" peacefully. But after making this case, the show producers trotted out film of something even more remarkable IMO. A crow, who had figured out a way to self-medicate himself to keep from dying. The issue is the removal of old wooden shingle roofs. The owners of a house want a new roof. Cool. But when the wooden shingles are removed, 9 times out of 10 this process releases into the air millions of tiny mites, who had been previously living contented lives amid the shingles. These mites tend to land on birds, and then burrow into their bodies and eventually kill them. No shit. This is what really happens. The mind-boggler in the TV show is that there is footage of a crow flying down and landing on a picnic table at a construction site in which one of these wooden shingle roofs is being removed. A worker has left a cigar burn- ing in an ash tray on the table. The crow alights, walks over to the ash tray and opens its wings, literally giving itself a "smoke bath" in the fumes of the cigar. The tobacco fumes contain nicotine. Which kills the mites. Which means that this particular crow survives. Now is that cool, or what? Would humans be able to figure this out? Crows did.
