At least two of the definitions used to separate humans from other animals that were common when I was a baby anthropology major have since fallen by the wayside.
The first to go was the idea that our species was the only tool-using species. Of course, research on chimpanzees, dolphins, even dung beetles, suggested maybe that was too easy a definition. Meanwhile, the crows were sitting back and laughing at us.
The other rubric, which seemed even more persuasive, was our effortless, embedded capacity for language. But there’s growing evidence that other species have something very like language, and in fact it may be our own lack of precise observations that led us to that conclusion (also the difficulty of observing animals who swim and fly).
Crows speak in dialects, and they change their pronunciations when they move to join a new group so they’ll fit in. According to ornithologist John M. Marzluff and author Tony Angell (In the Company of Crows and Ravens) their calls “vary regionally, like human dialects that can vary from valley to valley,” and “When crows join a new flock,” they wrote, “they learn the flock’s dialect by mimicking the calls of dominant flock members.” Crows have popular kids, too.
Listen to crow calls here.
What do they mean?
(Thank you Cornell ornithology lab.)