Hi Tweets and Judy and Linda,

I wrote to Tony Angell, one of the authors of "In the Company of Crows
and Ravens", and asked him his thoughts and whether or not he and John
Marzluff dealt with this in either their book or in the PBS special
that aired last fall. Here are his comments.
As Tony is not a "Tweet", I will forward any responses to him and then
post for him again, if his response is requested. Feel free to post
your responses either on Tweeters or offlist to me or both.
Interesting...

As I write, the crows in my yard are both harrassing their own and
other species! No death knell, do I hear...

--------------------this, from Tony:


>> Hi Barb:
>>
>> Yes, we discuss this behavior to some degree in our book, In the
>> Company of Crows and Ravens, but like many mysteries regarding
>> crows, this one's solution is incomplete. One thing seems certain,
>> there seems to be some murderous punishment dispensed by crows
>> towards other crows. The problem is that we really don't
>> understand the source of the wrath (territorial dispute, disease,
>> revenge of some sort)? That the other bird appeared injured may
>> well have been the result of the original assault and the team of
>> crows were seeking to finish off the offender -- crow execution.
>> Then too, we don't know if the injured crow (with a condition
>> unrelated to an injury inflicted by other crows) was in such a
>> condition that dispatching it was essentially putting it out of
>> it's misery in a response not unlike our shooting a horse to
>> relieve its pain inasmuch as it is beyond any chance of survival.++
>>
>> I realize that the above is speculation but as we have learned,
>> from speculation/hypothesis come fact and there are still a lot of
>> facts to learn on these species.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> ++ Oddly enough, shooting the horse is more an example of altruism,
>> but in the crow's case it could be an extreme form of kin selection
>> as it would ultimately relieve the suffering kin folk from pain.
>>


-----------------------


Barb Deihl

North Matthews Beach - NE Seattle

barbdeihl at comcast.net



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