meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Science Quickly

Some Crows Hit On Dead Companions

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2018

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

About 5 percent of crows will attempt to copulate with other crows that have joined the choir invisible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.j.p.

0:23.9

That's y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.6

This is Scientific Americans' 60-second science.

0:37.5

I'm Jason Goldman.

0:40.4

Crows react really strongly to one of their own being dead,

0:45.8

including gathering around their deceased comrades.

0:49.7

Some experts believe that these so-called crow funerals are efforts to learn, perhaps so they

0:56.5

can avoid the same fate.

0:59.4

University of Washington researcher Kaylee Swift is one of those crow experts.

1:04.3

When a film crew came to her campus to record these behaviors, Swift and her colleagues

1:09.3

placed a dead crow on the grass, and they waited

1:12.2

for the crows to show up and investigate, just as they had done hundreds of previous times.

1:17.5

The first bird, you know, came in like they do, and I'm sort of bracing myself for what,

1:23.3

what has become, you know, what I'm expecting to be the typical response,

1:27.9

which is that it alights in a tree and it alarm calls and then other birds come in.

1:33.0

But instead what it does is it flies down to the ground and it kind of walks up to the crow.

1:39.4

But then it goes into really typical crow pre-copulatory posturing, where basically they kind of drop

1:47.5

their wings down and they stick their tails up and they strut.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scientific American, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scientific American and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.