BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
The World Beyond BetterMost => Anything Goes => Topic started by: delalluvia on September 16, 2010, 10:30:07 pm
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Using a tiny stick might not seem like much, but it's the crow equivalent of piloting a 747 or running a particle accelerator - it takes years of training to master and it's still pretty difficult even for experts at the practice.
http://io9.com/5640100/how-crows-mastered-the-art-of-tool-use
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Excellent title for the thread, Del! Though "soon-to-be" might be a bit of a stretch. Given the pace of evolution, I would say that by the time the crows take over, even the Statue of Liberty may be long gone.
But that's sort of how it worked for humans, right? We started using crudely fashioned tools, which let us kill larger animals, which let us consume more protein, which both nourished and necessitated bigger brains, and the next thing you know we have cars and planes and iPhone apps.
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Excellent title for the thread, Del! Though "soon-to-be" might be a bit of a stretch. Given the pace of evolution, I would say that by the time the crows take over, even the Statue of Liberty may be long gone.
But that's sort of how it worked for humans, right? We started using crudely fashioned tools, which let us kill larger animals, which let us consume more protein, which both nourished and necessitated bigger brains, and the next thing you know we have cars and planes and iPhone apps.
And only of course, if we let them. Humans have only been around a million years or so, a drop in the bucket in geologic time. But no need to be alarmed, ;) plenty of creatures use tools and have been for a long while, but aren't about to start making iPods.
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Desmond Morris' Animal Days has a lot of material about crows; Morris' wife is an expert on them. They're very intelligent and can be taught to talk, about as clearly as a mynah bird. Animal Days had a very funny story about a crow they'd taught to talk who, for reasons known only to itself, flew away and established a new home in a nearby city park. The bird had a heavy British accent and knew quite a few cusswords; and it freaked out a lot of park patrons by approaching them and getting 'chatty.'
They've traditionally been associated with death; though not directly like owls often have been. Crows are more like liaisons or emissaries between this world and the next.
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Mmm...I thought apes were going to be our future overlords?