Renowned for their intelligence, crows can mimic human speech, use tools and gather for what seem to be funeral rites when a member of their murder, as groups of crows are known, dies or is killed. They can identify and remember faces, even among large crowds.
They also tenaciously hold grudges. When a murder of crows singles out a person as dangerous, its wrath can be alarming, and can be passed along beyond an individual crow’s life span of up to a dozen or so years, creating multigenerational grudges.
Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”
. . .
How long do crows hold a grudge? Dr. Marzluff believes he has now answered the question: around 17 years.
141·2 months ago