In nature, there’s few birds quite so misunderstood as the humble crow.

Sure he has jet black plumage and a big sharp beak, sure his collective noun is a ‘murder’, but what did a crow ever do to you?

The truth is, these creatures – which live an average of seven or eight years in the wild – are incredibly intelligent, and are very good at learning.

And a 2012 study showed us just how smart these incredible birds are: and you might want to take care not to wrong one.

In the study, which was published by PNAS, biologists took a unique approach to understand the behaviors of crows and how they learn and evolve to keep themselves safe.

To put their theories to the test, the scientists and their colleagues wore masks while feeding and caring for their captive crows. These masks were classed as ‘friendly’ masks.

On the other hand, when capturing the crows, they wore ‘dangerous’ masks, before the crows underwent brain scans to understand exactly what was going on when they saw and were captured by someone with a ‘dangerous face’. And incredibly, as researcher John Marzluff explained in a 2020 statement, the result was exactly as you’d expect a human brain to respond:

“With the crows and imaging, it surprised me that the part of the brain that reacted when they saw a dangerous person was the same as it would be in ours. I didn’t know that we’d be able to, you know, see that sort of response, but it was so clear and so consistent among individuals. As an ecologist that’s used to sloppy data, to see a physiological response so precise, I was kind of blown away, just that we could tap into that and learn it.”

But the crows weren’t just scared of the ‘dangerous’ mask for a short time. In fact, just like humans, their minds seemed to register trauma – and the results continue to this day.

How? Well even though some of the birds who were originally trapped by someone in the ‘dangerous’ mask have now died, the face’s trauma-associated status seems to have been passed on to other birds, showing the crows’ knack for collective learning, as Marzluff continued:

“It’s now 14 years that the birds continue to respond to us with the dangerous mask… it’s been ongoing and continues to this day with documenting the continued response and who’s involved. So, it’ll be curious to see with him out of the picture how that response changes (from the female).”

The real moral of this story? Be kind to crows – because they will remember.

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