Birds hold 'funerals' for dead

[Bosonic]

When western scrub jays encounter a dead bird, they call out to one another and stop foraging.

The jays then often fly down to the dead body and gather around it, scientists have discovered.

The behaviour may have evolved to warn other birds of nearby danger, report researchers in California, who have published the findings in the journal Animal Behaviour.

The revelation comes from a study by Teresa Iglesias and colleagues at the University of California, Davis, US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19421217

[xchrom]

1. Interesting. Nt

[Berlum]

2. All our relatives have their own cultural ways

[Cooley Hurd]

3. Birds in New Orleans do this...

...but with a Jazz band.

[Motown_Johnny]

4. I think they are just looking for some barbecue sauce

[HereSince1628]

5. I have read stories that crows call to assemble other crows in this way around dead deer

in one of the studies, the reason given was to create a flock of feeders. Within a flock the possibility of attack on an individual feeding bird by a predator drawn to the corpse would be reduced--more eyes, and spreading risk across the group.

Jays and crows do belong to the same family, the Corvidae,

[alfredo]

13. It gives clues to the behavior of the predator/scavenger ancestors we call dinosaurs.

[HereSince1628]

17. Maybe. I think for sure it gives us some insight into the role of flocking in the Corvids

[alfredo]

19. I can see why the crow has taken on so much symbolism. So smart.

[1monster]

29. When I was a kid, there was a boy, Joey, who lived on the next farm over who loved

animals of all kinds. Joey had a one legged crow that used to follow him where ever he went. If Joey biked it over to our house, the crow would fly with him and stay till he biked it back home. The bird could even say a few words.

Crows are very intelligent.

Check out the bobsledding crow:

And the crow that uses traffic lights to safely gather its cracked nuts:

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Actually, they come together to perform a seance to recycle the dead bird's soul.

That's what gives their wings lift.

This Science group is iggnint.

[Ty Templeton]

7. Birds are MUCH smarter than most people imagine

Birds, for instance, are adept at tool making. Studies have shown if you put food out of reach of a bird, and leave it a bit of bendable metal, crows and jays will eventually figure out how to make a hook out of the metal, and hook the food with it. ALSO: Birds have astounding memories. Research was done at Harvard (I might have the University wrong here, my memory isn't as strong as a crow's...) to see how birds reacted to a masked man chasing them out of a public area. Years later, the same mask would illicit strong, and sometimes violent reactions from the crow population, EVEN IN CROWS BORN AFTER THE ORIGINAL EVENT. Somehow, either the birds were teaching their young to hate this mask, or young crows were emulating their elders, and holding on to the emotional reaction to events they only knew about through emulation.

[OnyxCollie]

15. .

[IMG][/IMG]

[mchill]

18. Someone reported to this same Journal

about one of their two cats killing a baby Stellar Jay. For 5 years, til that cat's life ended, it became a marked assassin. The one cat was dogged and harrased by the flock of this baby Jay while leaving his other cat alone.

My own 8 lb cat brought a male Stellar Jay into the house last week. I rescued the Jay, but have thus far seen no revenge, thankfully.

[Odin2005]

22. That does not suprise me in the least.

Many species of Corvid are know to remember individual humans and point out to others if that human is dangerous to them or not. This is not some instinctive "I see a predator, RUN" behavior, there is some serious conscious thinking involved.

[MADem]

23. And boy oh boy, can parrots learn! nt

[Yavapai]

31. But not before they have had there morning coffee

[MADem]

33. That's hilarious!!! nt

[woo me with science]

25. Our dog found an injured crow in the woods near our house

and barked at it at close range until we were able to pull her away. The poor bird was most certainly terrified and died soon afterward.

A couple of times after that, a flock of crows screamed and swooped at our dog when they saw her in the backyard alone. I am sure it was revenge.

[Omaha Steve]

8. So much to learn from other animals on planet earth

Marta and I feed the birds every day.

K&R!

[Cleita]

9. And Jays never forget when a predator gets one of theirs either.

When they are around, my cat won't go out because the minute one of them spots him, they call to their own who relentlessly attack him until he goes back into the house.

[libinnyandia]

10. King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Lorenz had a lot of great stories about birds' intelligence.

[marginlized]

11. Great book if you're interested ...

"In the Company of Crows and Ravens" by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell describes this same behavior and much more evidence of Corvid intelligence.

http://www.amazon.com/Company-Crows-Ravens-John-Marzluff/dp/0300100760

[COLGATE4]

12. I have seen crows gather around

the corpse of a dead 'comrade' doing nothing but quietly mourning. Very impressive.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. Bob and Elvis are two of the Stellar Jays that visit us

If I call out 'peanuts' and place a few on the deck rail they'll come in for a snack.
Bob has an addiction to dry cat food, I've seen him swoop in and snag some with both cats asleep just a few feet away.

I'm trying to train him to come when I call out 'here, kitty, kitty' using cat food instead of peanuts, cause I think it would be hilarious

[siligut]

16. The crows were making a huge ruckus out in my yard one morning

We live near a large natural park, so we have many crows in the area. Anyway, I went to see what the fuss was and there was a crow lying under the huge conifer. The crows just kept cawing, I put some gloves on and took a look at the dead crow. It wasn't obvious what killed him, he was intact, so I doubted that it was our cat that got him.

I went in and got the shovel and dug a hole, all the while the crows in the trees kept up their din. I then picked up the dead bird and held it up to them, loudly stating the obvious. I put the bird in the hole and as I started covering it with dirt, the crows fell silent. They then just started flying off.

I know crows are smart, but I was a little surprised at this behavior. Thank you for this post.

[SoDesuKa]

20. Loudly Stating the Obvious

When you loudly stated the obvious, were you tempted to embellish the story a bit? You might have gone on at length describing the bird's civic virtues, its devotion to its family . . .



Alas! Poor Jack

[siligut]

28. I didn't know him well, so my eulogy was quite short

It pretty much went, "See? He's dead."

I didn't know about bird funeral behavior and I just wanted to make sure the other crows knew that any hope for recovery was gone before I started shoveling dirt on him.

[robinlynne]

30. wow.

[Odin2005]

21. Jays, ravens, and crows (corvids) are the smartest birds.

They are AT LEAST as smart as great apes. They evolved their intelligence because they are generalist omnivores who are very social, much like us.

When most people see a crow they see a pest, I see one of the smartest non-human creatures.

[Historic NY]

26. They (crows) got us in trouble at work for cigarette butts & garbage on the ground..

When there were still a few of us smoking we had ash trays outside. I'd often went out around 500-600 am and a couple of big old trees would be loaded with crows. They would watch me and I them. The boss would yell about the butts on the ground and we'd tell him no we used the ash trays. Finally, we caught the crows on video camera picking out each butt and dropping them on the ground. I seems some people would dump in garbage or food sometimes, the crows didn't wan the nasty butts and separated them from the morsels.

Smart oh yes....I used to yell at them after this incident and they would yell back when they saw me dump the tray.

[Pachamama]

24. I am not surprised at all to learn this about Scrub Jays - they are some of the smartest birds

We are in the Bay Area and they are native birds...we have a mating pair in our Wisteria off the front porch. They are very clever and swoop in for cat food and they love sneaking to get our rabbits food when i put the rabbits out in a pen on the lawn. Even when i try to hide or move the food, they watch and observe and figure out ways to get to it. If i go running over to shoo them away, they start to call out to each other in the warnings. But they never give up - i think they are so intelligent, they know to fly to a perch outside the kitchen window & make sure im rhere and then go steal food.

The fact that they might actually have "funerals" and have this awareness....not surprising to me at all....

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

27. I once found a birdnest

Do you remember when a can of Spam had a windup key that you would stick in the top and it would wind a strip of metal all the way around the can, allowing the lid to be lifted? The bird nest had the strip of metal, unwound, and woven into the nest with the key hanging jauntily off the side. It was amazing.

[Skittles]

34. that is so cool!!!

[JDPriestly]

32. Western Scrub Jays are beautiful too.

Check out Google images. I tried to link to it but the link wasn't good.

[Flaxbee]

35. Magpies 'feel grief and hold funerals'

From the Telegraph in 2009:

Dr Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, said these rituals prove that magpies, usually seen as an aggressive predator, also have a compassionate side.

The discovery raises the debate about whether emotions are solely a human trait or whether they can be found in all animals.

Previous studies have suggested that gorillas also mourn their dead while rats have empathy and cats form friendships.

Dr Bekoff said he studied four magpies alongside a magpie corpse and recorded their behaviour.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6392594/Magpies-feel-grief-and-hold-funerals.html

[kimbutgar]

36. My cat caught a blue bird once on my deck and ate it

Some birds were watching. A couple of days later they lined up on the wires above my deck like they were having a funeral. I took a picture which I still have. I don't know how to post pictures here but it is a good one. My cat refused to go out on the deck. I picked him up and took him outside, he jumped from my arms and hid. That cat never ate another bird that I was aware of again.

[Rozlee]

37. One of our cats killed a female Cardinal once.

My husband went out back and buried her, covering her with rocks to keep predators from digging her out. She and her mate had always eaten from a feeder just outside our bedroom. Shortly after that, her mate kept flying into our window, over and over several times a day. After a week of this, he finally hit the window so hard, he knocked himself out. We hurried out to pick him up before the cats could get to him and he came around groggily and flew off. We never saw him again.

[proReality]

38. Mourning Doves do it.

A neighborhood cat killed a mourning dove in our yard. Within a couple of hours there were hundreds of the birds on our roof and in the trees around the property. The vigil was incredibly silent, not a coo was to be heard. They stayed for two days.

[Doremus]

39. All these stories of cats killing birds.

Have any of their owners learned to keep their cats inside now?

I sincerely hope that the knowledge that birds are intelligent is enough to prod cat owners to keep their pets inside .... for many reasons, not the least of which for the sake of the birds but also for the cats' own safety.