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Speaker 3: Hy is that old guy sitting on a shabby sheet
Speaker 3: couch in Anthropology waiting for his daughter to try on
Speaker 3: pants that cost too much? Ali ward back for another
Speaker 3: episode of Ologies. A spooky episode of Ologies, A scary episode? Okay, fine,
Speaker 3: but does it get gotha than the inky blue sheen
Speaker 3: of a crow in the Shadows who also happens to
Speaker 3: be having a funeral for another crow. Nothing is more
Speaker 3: goth than that, nothing, not even a spider listening to
Speaker 3: Bauhaus on vinyl, A bat smoking a clove at a
Speaker 3: warehouse party is not as goth as a crow funeral.
Speaker 3: And I've been sitting on this episode since July. I've
Speaker 3: been waiting to air it this week. I've been just
Speaker 3: building with nausea. I'm so excited to talk about Corvid
Speaker 3: thanatology Frickin' crow funerals. But first I will talk quickly
Speaker 3: as I tell you things that also matter. Okay, thank
Speaker 3: you to patrons at patreon dot com, slash Ologies, Thanks
Speaker 3: to everyone for buying cool stuff at ologiesmerch dot com,
Speaker 3: and thanks for subscribing to and rating the podcast, especially
Speaker 3: for reviewing it, which helps get it seen by other people.
Speaker 3: And each week, to prove that your reviews mean so much,
Speaker 3: I read you a fresh one. And this week I
Speaker 3: creeped on serious Beatles who wrote, I have been experiencing
Speaker 3: an odd twilight Zone effect where shortly after listening to
Speaker 3: one of your shows, a moment in my life was
Speaker 3: so much richer from a thing I learned there. For
Speaker 3: just one example, snails. I met a tiny pack of
Speaker 3: wet sidewalk snails. As I crouched intensely over their little
Speaker 3: googly eyes, I was overcome by an appreciation of their
Speaker 3: love darts. Tiny hermaphroditic bodies, beauty products from their m
Speaker 3: word and French immigrant past so much I cried serious
Speaker 3: beetle that rules. Thank you for letting me creep your review. Okay,
Speaker 3: Corvid thanatology? What the fuck word crow funerals. Yes, you're
Speaker 3: about to listen to an hour long interview about the
Speaker 3: grieving behaviors of crows from one of my favorite alive
Speaker 3: scientists on the planet. It's so good, She's so good. Okay.
Speaker 3: So Corvid's quick background belonged to a group of perching
Speaker 3: birds with a developed vocal organ. That's what makes a corbet.
Speaker 3: Sometimes these birds are called songbirds, but apparently ornithologists have
Speaker 3: gotten into like almost fistfights about the term songbirds. So
Speaker 3: which birds are corbets? Okay? They include crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepees, chuffs,
Speaker 3: and nutcrackers, which kind of sounds like an alice in
Speaker 3: Wonderland chest set or a roll call of gnomes, perhaps
Speaker 3: a menu of local draft beers from Portland. But it's
Speaker 3: a realist. I just read verbatim just to make sure
Speaker 3: that I don't get any wrong and cause any more
Speaker 3: ornithological fisticuffs. Anyway, we're talking about crows and how they die.
Speaker 3: So you're going to hear about why crows have this
Speaker 3: death laden reputation and some unsettling science mask facts. And
Speaker 3: we'll hear about desperate alarm calls and feeling like an outsider,
Speaker 3: and how brains work, and radioactive tracers and murderers but
Speaker 3: not the sad kind and plague doctors and all kinds
Speaker 3: of dark goodness that will have you sitting on a
Speaker 3: park bench staring into the treetops with this new found
Speaker 3: fascination once you hear the bonkers tales of biologists and
Speaker 3: corvid banatologist.
Speaker 4: Kayleie Swift, I'm so excited to talk to you.
Speaker 3: So here's this. There's your microphone. Here, here's mine. First
Speaker 3: thing that I always do is just ask people to
Speaker 3: pronounce their first last name, just to make sure that
Speaker 3: I say it right.
Speaker 5: Sure, Kaylee Swift, Okay, just checking.
Speaker 3: I believe he was pronounced though. I think it's doctor Kate.
Speaker 3: This is where I just lose my shit about it.
Speaker 3: I mean, how long have you been a doctor?
Speaker 5: Like like forty eight hours? Oh my god, no, maybe
Speaker 5: seventy two that since Friday night at nine thirty.
Speaker 3: My god, tell me everything.
Speaker 5: It has been in a whirlwind sprint. I did two
Speaker 5: degrees and six years.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. So it was really fast. So doctor
Speaker 3: Kaylee Swift got her master's in science in Animal behavior
Speaker 3: and neuroethology. I think that's how the brain affects what
Speaker 3: animals do. I think that's what that means at the
Speaker 3: University of Washington in twenty fifteen, and then she launched
Speaker 3: straight into getting her PhD. She completed her research about
Speaker 3: crow death behaviors, and just over three years she defended
Speaker 3: her PhD on the last night possible before the end
Speaker 3: of the quarter. Like her dissertation was due by midnight
Speaker 3: that day. And this breakneck pace was partly because there
Speaker 3: was a postdoctorate position in Denali that started right after.
Speaker 3: She wanted to be able to hop over and do
Speaker 3: that work. Also, the first time she mentioned she was
Speaker 3: moving to Denali for a while, I asked if she
Speaker 3: had to get a lot of travel vaccines, and then
Speaker 3: I realized that Denali is a park in a life
Speaker 3: and not a small island in the malaria belt. Anyway,
Speaker 3: she's very smart and hard working, and she busted proverbial
Speaker 3: ass for that PhD. You're not usually under the gun
Speaker 3: like that, Like, how'd you deal with it?
Speaker 5: I cried a lot. I yeah, I had a few
Speaker 5: moments where I was just like, oh, this is it possible?
Speaker 5: So I did that. I reached out to my peers
Speaker 5: and said, I need you to text me and tell
Speaker 5: me I'm going to do this and everything's going to
Speaker 5: be okay. And they did it because they were wonderful
Speaker 5: and I worked really hard. So it was kind of
Speaker 5: a combination of those three things.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now tell me what it was about crows
Speaker 3: that made you so interested and when did you start
Speaker 3: really studying them. Did you always like sit in parks
Speaker 3: and like high school and stuff and just like gaze
Speaker 3: at crows or was there a moment.
Speaker 5: No, there was definitely a moment. So I, since I
Speaker 5: was a little kid, loved animals and always really gravitated
Speaker 5: towards science. I could stare at bugs all day. I know,
Speaker 5: I just thought they were so cool. I'm with you, Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I could look at pictures of bugs and books
Speaker 5: and read about them. But I wasn't, you know, I
Speaker 5: wasn't like journaling as a little kid, er taking fastidious notes.
Speaker 5: But then as I got older, you know, in high
Speaker 5: school it was sort of like and but as I
Speaker 5: went into college, I had circled back around to wanting
Speaker 5: to do wildlife sciences or animal behavior more broadly, and
Speaker 5: I didn't really have a preference or an idea of
Speaker 5: what exactly that would look like, and I had in
Speaker 5: thinking about what kinds of questions really interested me. The
Speaker 5: answer I kept coming back to was this idea of
Speaker 5: the social intelligence hypothesis, which is this idea that being
Speaker 5: social and having these complex social lives may have really
Speaker 5: driven our cognitive advances because it's difficult to do that.
Speaker 5: It takes a lot of brain power, and that question
Speaker 5: and you know, there's lots of nuanced ways that you
Speaker 5: can look at that that has always really captivated me.
Speaker 5: And so mind of the raven and being like I
Speaker 5: like birds, I like animal behavior and cognition, and oh
Speaker 5: look at this. There's this whole lot of those birds
Speaker 5: that now you know, science is collectively saying like, oh wow,
Speaker 5: I guess we were super wrong about the capabilities of birds,
Speaker 5: Like look at what grows and ravens can do.
Speaker 3: Do they have to issue an apology to birds at
Speaker 3: some point, like, fuck, man, we're sorry, you're you got
Speaker 3: great brains. You're doing games over here. Like, was there
Speaker 3: a moment in time culturally where we were like, we're
Speaker 3: so sorry birds.
Speaker 5: I don't know if that has happened, but if it hasn't,
Speaker 5: it really should.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know, one of the things I've experienced
Speaker 5: through my research is still a lot of people don't
Speaker 5: really realize that. And that's been one of the most
Speaker 5: rewarding things about doing my work is seeing people go, wow,
Speaker 5: I had no idea that they did this. That's so cool.
Speaker 5: I like crows more now. So that's been, like I said,
Speaker 5: just one of the most rewarding parts of the research
Speaker 5: that I've done. Uh so. Yeah. So the marriage of
Speaker 5: all of those things birds and intelligence and animal behavior
Speaker 5: is what led me to crows, and then, really serendipitously,
Speaker 5: my undergraduate advisor at the time I was going through
Speaker 5: this revelation happened to be working on the Facial Recognition
Speaker 5: publication with one John Marslof, who's like.
Speaker 3: The dude when it comes to wearing creepy masks around crows.
Speaker 5: Yes. Yeah, it's like, you know, a handful of crow
Speaker 5: experts in the United States, and he is one of them.
Speaker 5: And so it was like, oh, this's worked out nicely, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like in your research, were you
Speaker 3: to google you, were someone to google you. I feel
Speaker 3: like photos of you wearing a ghastly mask with like
Speaker 3: a Halloween mask that someone had left in their trunk
Speaker 3: for several years, but there's you holding a dead crow
Speaker 3: with the mask on. I have so many questions, so
Speaker 3: really quick. Doctor John Marslif, professor of wildlife science at
Speaker 3: the University of Washington, was Kayley's PhD advisor, and he's
Speaker 3: been studying crows for years. You may be familiar with
Speaker 3: his research in wearing certain masks around crows, which showed
Speaker 3: that hell yes, they very much identify human faces, and
Speaker 3: they will squawk up a storm. This is technically called
Speaker 3: scolding when they see a foe, kind of like we
Speaker 3: see in human beings at a professional wrestling match or
Speaker 3: an episode of The Real Housewives, which, let's face it,
Speaker 3: those two scenarios are just two sides of the same coin. So,
Speaker 3: for example, if a researcher trapped a crow for observation
Speaker 3: wearing a certain mask, most of the local crows in
Speaker 3: the future will freak out. If someone casually walks by
Speaker 3: them in the same mask. Human beings might also freak
Speaker 3: out that they didn't study but they started using this
Speaker 3: ghastly cro magnum mask and a Dick Cheney Halloween one,
Speaker 3: but ended up in the end employing some specially made
Speaker 3: masks later in the study, which I'll be honest are
Speaker 3: kind of creepier because they're like someone's face but just
Speaker 3: a little bit off. So imagine like Michael Myers with
Speaker 3: shoulder length hair, standing in a park and writing down
Speaker 3: everything you did on a clipboard. But before we get
Speaker 3: to all of that work specifically, let's throw this thing
Speaker 3: in reverse for a second. Okay, I'm gonna start basics.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back a little bit. Difference between
Speaker 3: a crow and a raven and why do you study.
Speaker 6: Crows and not ravens. I'm sorry, I don't know this.
Speaker 6: I think ravens are bigger. No, don't apologize at all.
Speaker 6: It's a really common question. Why would you know this
Speaker 6: unless you'd ask somebody earlier. So crows and ravens are
Speaker 6: different species, but they're in the same genus, so like
Speaker 6: a lion and a tiger. Okay, but they're really superficially.
Speaker 5: Similar looking, So it's easy to mix them up, so
Speaker 5: that the main things to look for is ravens are
Speaker 5: about two and a half times the size of a crow. Okay,
Speaker 5: so I always tell people if you're like out and
Speaker 5: you see a crow and you go, that is the
Speaker 5: biggest bleebity bleep crow I've ever seen. It's it's probably
Speaker 5: because it's a raven in flight. The easiest way to
Speaker 5: tell them apart is crows have more sort of squared
Speaker 5: tails versus ravens have this really distinct wedd shaped tail.
Speaker 5: Oh and then if you are close enough to see
Speaker 5: one or see a picture of one, you'll notice that
Speaker 5: the throat feathers on a raven are really textured like
Speaker 5: a beard, versus crows have really smooth hair like throat feathers.
Speaker 5: And on a raven, we call those special feathers hackles,
Speaker 5: and they articulate them and use them in a lot
Speaker 5: of visual behavioral displays. But that once you get a
Speaker 5: look at a few photos, that feature becomes really easy
Speaker 5: to detect. So those are sort of the three big
Speaker 5: physical ones. Their voices are really different.
Speaker 3: How are their voices different?
Speaker 5: So crows do the classic you know, caw and ravens
Speaker 5: have this much deeper, more hollow croake sound. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: a very and ravens. Both both species make a huge
Speaker 5: diversity of really cool noises. But personally, I think the
Speaker 5: vocal repertoires of ravens are are cooler than they are
Speaker 5: for crows. Don't tell the crows.
Speaker 3: I said that crows are like, she just defended got
Speaker 3: her PhD and now she's throwing.
Speaker 5: Us under the bus.
Speaker 3: Twait, what about can ravens make voices?
Speaker 5: Crows, Ravens and magpies are excellent, excellent mimics. Yes, they're
Speaker 5: essentially parrots. Crazy not maybe not quite the in terms
Speaker 5: of the volume of their vocabulary, but their accuracy to
Speaker 5: the human voice outstanding.
Speaker 3: Crazy. Yeah, who is creepier or more goth Closer Ravens?
Speaker 5: I would say ravensky because they have more of a
Speaker 5: habit of plucking eyes out of living things. Crows will
Speaker 5: do that too, but I think Braven's have more of
Speaker 5: that reputation.
Speaker 3: It's pretty hardcore.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know that's skin is thick. Mammalian skin
Speaker 5: is thick. So if you're hungry, I mean you're gonna
Speaker 5: you're gonna go for.
Speaker 3: The easy part, get the good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's very.
Speaker 3: Marilyn Manson man, that is HALLOWEENI is all get out.
Speaker 3: So when Kayley got to graduate school, she started looking
Speaker 3: into projects that involved these complex, fascinating big bird brains.
Speaker 5: John had already started to do some studies with the
Speaker 5: functional imaging work that we do where we look at crowbrains,
Speaker 5: and he had already been inspired doing that, like, oh,
Speaker 5: it would be really cool if we would show them
Speaker 5: a dead crow, because humans for a long time have
Speaker 5: known that crows respond really strongly to their dead This
Speaker 5: is that idea is not something that I contributed to humankind,
Speaker 5: and so he thought that that would be cool. But
Speaker 5: in order to do that, you really need to have
Speaker 5: this field component so that you can, you know, say
Speaker 5: like this is what they do in their normal environment,
Speaker 5: this is the external manifestation of their behavior, and then
Speaker 5: we can look inside their brain and then try and
Speaker 5: tell the whole story.
Speaker 3: So their research involves observing the urbs in their natural
Speaker 3: home externally from Afar, and then after that they're like, hey, heyburbs,
Speaker 3: come take a quick science vacation with us just a
Speaker 3: few weeks. We'll look at your brain function before releasing
Speaker 3: you again into the wild. To tell some pretty great
Speaker 3: alien abduction stories at your next crow party.
Speaker 5: And so we talked about that a lot. And the
Speaker 5: advantages of that project were one that it's awesome. Two,
Speaker 5: it was feasible financially because you know, I didn't need
Speaker 5: expensive tracking devices or tags or anything like that, So
Speaker 5: it was it was low cost, which was important because
Speaker 5: I had zero funding. I had gotten an amazing fellowship
Speaker 5: from NSF to support me personally through three years of
Speaker 5: graduate school, but it didn't include any research funds, and
Speaker 5: he didn't have any research funds for me.
Speaker 3: Those masks are free, man.
Speaker 5: Well, so fortunately the masks had already been bought and
Speaker 5: secured before the previous facial recognition study. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 5: just trying to make it work with like, what resources
Speaker 5: are already here?
Speaker 3: Where do those masks come from? I'm so sorry, such
Speaker 3: a dumb question.
Speaker 5: No, not a dumb question, because nobody knows the answers.
Speaker 5: They had Costume makers come and take molds of actual
Speaker 5: people's faces. So I always tell people to be gentle
Speaker 5: when they talk about the masks because Linda and Vivian
Speaker 5: and Joe are all actually real people whoa yeah, which
Speaker 5: are not a scary in real life. I assure you.
Speaker 3: I'm sure a thousand percent. Okay, but that's good to know.
Speaker 3: And so you were like, don't have a lot of funding.
Speaker 3: I have zero fundings. And so this idea that instead
Speaker 3: of tracking and tagging or killing and dissecting the animals,
Speaker 3: You're like, we can look at their brain activity using
Speaker 3: functional MRIs.
Speaker 5: So not MRIs. We use a process called FDG PET okay.
Speaker 5: And the reason that we don't use an MRI is
Speaker 5: that you could not train a crow to go into
Speaker 5: an MRI and not have, you know, a meltdown. So
Speaker 5: they would just say, would all their brain activity would
Speaker 5: be panic?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 5: So basically what we do is we capture crows in
Speaker 5: the wild and we have an aviary that's fit to
Speaker 5: house crows. The housing is acceptable for a couple months,
Speaker 5: and we give them a few weeks to get acclimated
Speaker 5: to captivity and just kind of calm down a little bit.
Speaker 5: And then the night before we're ready to image a subject,
Speaker 5: we take it into the radiology room and it goes
Speaker 5: in a smaller cage and we give it overnight to
Speaker 5: acclimate to that, and then the morning that we're ready
Speaker 5: to image, we take the bird out and we inject
Speaker 5: it with something called FDG, which is a modified glucose
Speaker 5: molecule with a radioactive tracer attached to it.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, So this this is a pet scan
Speaker 3: like a cancer patient.
Speaker 5: It is exactly the same process.
Speaker 3: My dad had to get a pet scan, so and
Speaker 3: we had to tell him not to eat carbs for
Speaker 3: like days before and he was like, this is bullshit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's one of the reasons they have to
Speaker 5: go in overnight is so that then they don't get
Speaker 5: any food. Basically, the idea of this process is, so
Speaker 5: we give them this glucose injection. Your brain uses glucose,
Speaker 5: you know, as it works. Whatever part of your brain
Speaker 5: is working the hardest is going to use the most glucose.
Speaker 5: So once we give them this injection, we can show
Speaker 5: them something like a dead crow or an empty room,
Speaker 5: or the face of a familiar threatening person or a
Speaker 5: familiar caring person, and whatever they're part of their brain
Speaker 5: is working, work and work into process. That information is
Speaker 5: going to concentrate that glucose. And the reason I described
Speaker 5: it as a modified glucose molecule is that it's been
Speaker 5: changed such that the body can't metabolize it anymore, so
Speaker 5: it's just going to stick there. And then what happens
Speaker 5: is after that period where we've shown them the stimulus,
Speaker 5: which we only have about fifteen minutes or so to
Speaker 5: do that, we can anesetize the bird and put it
Speaker 5: in the scanner, and the scanner, you know, zoom, jump jumps,
Speaker 5: goes around and it detects where that tracer landed, and
Speaker 5: we have about a forty five minute window before it
Speaker 5: starts to degrade. And then once the scanner's done, we
Speaker 5: can take the bird out, you know, keep it while
Speaker 5: it wakes up, and then it's free to go.
Speaker 3: Okay, bye. Are you showing them pictures of birds that
Speaker 3: they know so that it's familiar and they're like, that's
Speaker 3: my uncle.
Speaker 5: No, So that was one major caveat. With all of
Speaker 5: the research that I did. We always control to make
Speaker 5: sure that they were unfamiliar birds. And with the pet images,
Speaker 5: we weren't showing them photographs. We were showing them actual
Speaker 5: taxidermaid crows, right yeh. And it was just like on
Speaker 5: a stool in front of the bird.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. So it would be like, okay, you're
Speaker 3: going to go to a hotel overnight. In the morning,
Speaker 3: we're going to take you to the doctor's office. We're
Speaker 3: going to give you some super weird soft drink. It
Speaker 3: has radio tracers in it, and then we're going to
Speaker 3: take you in a room with a mommified human being,
Speaker 3: and then we're going to see what part of your
Speaker 3: brain lit up. Yeah, and so what parts of their
Speaker 3: brains would light up when it was another dead crow
Speaker 3: or just like a pencil.
Speaker 5: So I can't talk about that yet. Oh, I'm going
Speaker 5: to keep that close to the vest until I get
Speaker 5: it approved by my scientific peers to make sure everything
Speaker 5: is up to snuff.
Speaker 3: So she's not allowed to say for certain, but she
Speaker 3: did give me a clue that it's one of the
Speaker 3: three areas, perhaps the amygdala, which is an area associated
Speaker 3: with fear acquisition, or something called the NCL which is
Speaker 3: essentially the Avian analog to our prefrontal cortex and it
Speaker 3: deals with higher cognitive tasks. Might also, however, be the hippocampus,
Speaker 3: which is the little brain nugget responsible for learning and memory.
Speaker 3: She can't say. Yeah, the paper is going to be
Speaker 3: published sometime next year. I'm earnestly awaiting this like its
Speaker 3: oscar nominees. Okay, so if you're not looking at radioactive
Speaker 3: tracers in a bird headscan, what are some things you
Speaker 3: can see with your own human eyes? Can you give
Speaker 3: me an overview of some crow morning behaviors for those
Speaker 3: who have not seen it or haven't read your research,
Speaker 3: Like what happens when crows ceochrow die, or fly by
Speaker 3: and be like, oh shit, there's a dead one? Like
Speaker 3: what do they do?
Speaker 5: So the most common response is that the bird that
Speaker 5: discovers the body will alarm call, and that results in
Speaker 5: recruitment of other birds to the area to form what
Speaker 5: we call a mob. So, if you've ever seen crows
Speaker 5: go after an eagle or red to hawk or your cat,
Speaker 5: that's what mopping looks like. Whoa, And that's kind of
Speaker 5: that's the most common response. But that said, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of anecdotes of them doing other things. And John
Speaker 5: and I get emails all the time from people who
Speaker 5: We had one woman send us pictures of a crow
Speaker 5: she saw. It was carrying I think like a candy
Speaker 5: wrapper or some kind of food packaging, and it flew
Speaker 5: up to the dead crow and then it left the
Speaker 5: wrapper right there by the body. I notice you have
Speaker 5: died here is a twix. And we've had other people
Speaker 5: send us photos of dead crows where the other crows
Speaker 5: had left sticks by the body. So that's the you know,
Speaker 5: the more interesting stuff. I never witnessed anything like that myself,
Speaker 5: in you know, hundreds and hundreds of trials.
Speaker 3: She did see.
Speaker 5: One thing is sometimes about a quarter of the time,
Speaker 5: particularly during the breeding season, and they come down and
Speaker 5: they touch the dead crows in a variety of ways.
Speaker 5: And it can manifest as just sort of exploratory touching
Speaker 5: where they'd sort of gently kind of poke around with
Speaker 5: their bills. It can be this really aggressive pecking and
Speaker 5: they'll rip feathers out and pull the wings off and
Speaker 5: do all kinds of stuff. And then, in a really
Speaker 5: small portion, about four percent of the time, they are sexual.
Speaker 5: They will attempt copulation with the dead crows. But we
Speaker 5: also saw sexual behaviors manifest in other ways. Actually, like
Speaker 5: sometimes they would just walk over to the crows and
Speaker 5: then solicit you know, they have this very particular posture
Speaker 5: when they're getting ready to copulate. Oh hey, you single.
Speaker 5: And then the other really interesting thing we saw is
Speaker 5: sometimes pears would come in together and be like.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's a dead girl.
Speaker 5: We got a fuck, and they would have sex like immediately, yeah,
Speaker 5: and it was. And then something in the most rare
Speaker 5: cases on the pair would come in And these birds
Speaker 5: aren't marked. So I believe they were a pair based
Speaker 5: on all of the observations I had done leading into it,
Speaker 5: but you know, I can't absolutely positively guarantee it. But
Speaker 5: the first the bird would they would land on the
Speaker 5: ground and one of them would stread over and be like,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna mate with you, and it would get on
Speaker 5: top and then its partner would get on top of
Speaker 5: that one and they would have a sex sandwich with
Speaker 5: the dead crow. Yes. And the first time I saw this,
Speaker 5: you can just hear me in the video going, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, it's a three way. It's the fucking they're
Speaker 5: having sex on top with each other on the crow.
Speaker 5: It's a three way with the dead crow.
Speaker 3: No, why are they doing.
Speaker 5: Why are you doing that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Do they think they're like this will like them up?
Speaker 5: I think that they are just thinking. I am full
Speaker 5: of sexy hormones right now because it is my breeding
Speaker 5: season and there's a thing down here, and I am
Speaker 5: corny and I'm mad because it's on my territory. But
Speaker 5: I'm also kind of scared because it's dead and all
Speaker 5: of those things are happening in me at once, so
Speaker 5: so so I'm just gonna do all of the things.
Speaker 3: Like maybe they're on the brim of the apocalypse and
Speaker 3: this is just the first patient zero. They're like, I
Speaker 3: gotta get it in before party's over.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so my god, we can't. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 5: know yet exactly what is responsible for this behavior, but
Speaker 5: I am very much under the impression that it's related
Speaker 5: to the hormonal shifts that they're experiencing in the breeding season,
Speaker 5: and then probably manifesting is this sort of displacement behavior,
Speaker 5: which is essentially when animals are confronted with conflicting drives,
Speaker 5: sometimes they just do this third thing that's totally unrelated. So,
Speaker 5: for example, like goals, when they're faced with a competitor
Speaker 5: and it's kind of like, hey, am I going to
Speaker 5: go fight with this bird? Or am I gonna run away?
Speaker 5: Like I don't know, they'll just pull grass because they're
Speaker 5: like a do I run away? Do I fight? Okay,
Speaker 5: I don't know, I'm just gonna pull grass. Know.
Speaker 3: That's so confusing. That's like the worst for kind of procrastination. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I have, Like a bunch of emails due
Speaker 3: and a bunch of stuff to write, but instead I
Speaker 3: just like clean out the silverware drawer.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, at least you're not, you know, fucking dead people.
Speaker 3: I'm not, okay. So this episode is about crow funerals.
Speaker 3: So do they show up in bails? Do they demand
Speaker 3: to see will and testaments? Do they confess to long
Speaker 3: term affairs with the dead's best friend? What are some
Speaker 3: other ways that crows mourn the dead? I mean, I
Speaker 3: know that they leave sticks, they might circle and caw.
Speaker 3: Are there any other things that you have witnessed in
Speaker 3: the wild that you're like, what?
Speaker 5: Not? Really? So one of the things that we've heard
Speaker 5: is a lot of people will write to us and say,
Speaker 5: you know, I saw a vigil of crows and they
Speaker 5: stood around the body for four hours, and I never
Speaker 5: saw anything like that. Definitely. One thing that happens, though,
Speaker 5: is they'll they'll come in and they'll scream, and all
Speaker 5: their neighbors will come in. It'll be this really you know,
Speaker 5: ruckus thing for about fifteen or twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: So I grabbed that in a few other crow noises
Speaker 3: for this episode from Doctor Swift's YouTube channel, which has
Speaker 3: so many good videos and will be linked via the
Speaker 3: show notes. She also has some new amazing ones up
Speaker 3: from her time in the tropical balmy island of Denali.
Speaker 5: And then they kind of just start to calm down.
Speaker 5: So it's hard for me to say in those when
Speaker 5: I get those stories. If what people are saying is
Speaker 5: just kind of the end of this behavior, when the
Speaker 5: birds have started to be like, Okay, well, well we
Speaker 5: made our you know, we said our thing. Yeah, or
Speaker 5: if if when because you asked earlier, you know, if
Speaker 5: we're showing them familiar birds and or not so if
Speaker 5: maybe the explanation to some of these other, you know,
Speaker 5: ritual like behaviors is that they do slightly different things
Speaker 5: if it's a bird that they know. And I can't
Speaker 5: offer an answer to that just yet.
Speaker 3: And how smart are crows?
Speaker 5: Crows are primates essentially? Really yeah, so.
Speaker 3: I mean not actually, but there are far so.
Speaker 5: You know they're actually monkeys. Did you not know this?
Speaker 5: Alley God here where you are disclaimer?
Speaker 3: Crows are not actually monkeys. Please do not come at me, fools.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's really amazing because the crow brain the
Speaker 5: avian brain, but the crow brain is really quite different
Speaker 5: in a lot of ways than the mammalian brain. And
Speaker 5: one of the main features that's different is when you
Speaker 5: close your eyes and you think of a brain, you
Speaker 5: picture something really folded and squishy, Right, Yeah, Avian brains
Speaker 5: don't have those folds. It's totally smooth. What so they
Speaker 5: have managed in that tiny walnut size package with vastly
Speaker 5: less surface area to create these systems that do a
Speaker 5: lot of the same things that primates do. Just to
Speaker 5: give you some examples, crows or corvids or some evidence
Speaker 5: that they can count, that they have a you know,
Speaker 5: that they can they possess some kind of numerical, you know,
Speaker 5: quantitative abilities. Basically, New Caledonian crows were the first species
Speaker 5: besides chimpanzees that we discovered make and use tools, and
Speaker 5: that distinction between make and use is really important in
Speaker 5: terms of its you know, cognitive implications. They there's a
Speaker 5: lot of studies that suggest that these birds have theory
Speaker 5: of mind, which is essentially the capability to be like
Speaker 5: I am me and I have my motivations and you
Speaker 5: are you and you have different motivations. They seem perceptive
Speaker 5: to when they're being spied on. For example, is.
Speaker 3: This because you spied on them to?
Speaker 5: I mean, I have definitely had experiences where it seems so.
Speaker 5: For example, to do my field work, I always targeted
Speaker 5: breeding pairs, which means I needed to follow them around
Speaker 5: and identify their nest because I wanted to control I
Speaker 5: didn't want to be right next to their nest for
Speaker 5: one experiment and one hundred meters away for another one,
Speaker 5: so I wanted to control that distance.
Speaker 3: So what you're telling me is you were wearing a
Speaker 3: mask in a wig, and you were deliberately following mating couple, so.
Speaker 5: The mask doesn't go on until the experiment starts. So fortunately,
Speaker 5: because if that had been the case, then I would
Speaker 5: have never made it out alive.
Speaker 3: The idea of you just like lurking behind a tree
Speaker 3: and you're like in a full thing, just like spying
Speaker 3: on a mating pair is just the best kind of
Speaker 3: creepy I can possibly. Oh, well, I thing I can
Speaker 3: think of. It's so good. No, okay, so no, she
Speaker 3: was not wearing a mask during this research. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I just I got excited at the visual. But to
Speaker 3: finish this story, she was following and watching breeding pairs
Speaker 3: building nests, and I.
Speaker 5: Had multiple experiences where I would be following them around,
Speaker 5: watching them carry sticks to their nesting tree, and I'd
Speaker 5: be like, yes, I found it. Look, I watched them
Speaker 5: deposit all these sticks there, and then I would like
Speaker 5: leave and come back and I'd be like, huh, that
Speaker 5: pile hasn't changed at all, and I would go and
Speaker 5: hide and I'd watch them, and I realized they were
Speaker 5: actually nesting in a totally different tree. And I one
Speaker 5: hundred percent think that they were doing it on purpose,
Speaker 5: that they saw me watching them, and we're like, dad, da,
Speaker 5: my nest is over here. So that is one reason.
Speaker 5: But there was actually a really brilliantly designed study looking
Speaker 5: at ravens that more scientifically showed that they are thinking
Speaker 5: that they're imagining competitors that they can't see, which is
Speaker 5: so incredible. But yes, to return to the masks, and
Speaker 5: I did. I should look at my phone. I mean,
Speaker 5: I bet I did one of my experiments like a
Speaker 5: block from where we are right now. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 5: did it all over downtown Seattle, which was hard. It
Speaker 5: was an adventure because I was working fifteen hour days.
Speaker 5: I was getting into downtown Seattle like five in the
Speaker 5: morning with my scary mask. Oh my god, and I
Speaker 5: saw a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Wait, like, at five in the morning in a mask,
Speaker 3: how many people were so scared of you?
Speaker 5: It depended So most people at five in the morning
Speaker 5: are not scared of a person in a scary mask,
Speaker 5: is my experience. Most of the people who are out
Speaker 5: at five see somebody in a mask, and they're just
Speaker 5: kind of like, it's like the three o'clock people who
Speaker 5: get really scared at the mask person.
Speaker 3: Did you have a sandwich board or anything?
Speaker 4: That was like?
Speaker 5: So we did. So we eventually got it. Took a
Speaker 5: couple of trials before I was like, oh, we are
Speaker 5: never going to get through this unless people know. And
Speaker 5: even then had I had a woman I was doing
Speaker 5: a we were doing an experiment at Magdison Park, which
Speaker 5: is this really lovely big park in Seattle, and there's
Speaker 5: a big play area for kids, and we were out
Speaker 5: in the parking lot, right, I mean, it's not like
Speaker 5: we're being inconspicuous. I mean, how can you be?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: And we had we had our taxidermie hawk and our
Speaker 5: cron I'm standing there, I've got a clipboard and a
Speaker 5: camera and my volunteer is helping. And Joel Williams, who
Speaker 5: uh was my volunteer for my first couple of years
Speaker 5: and then became my full time taxidermist. Actually he is
Speaker 5: a very he's a very tall man. He's about six seven,
Speaker 5: and he really likes black and cameo, which you know,
Speaker 5: personal style, no problem, but that combo in a scary
Speaker 5: mask is not great. And I had a woman come
Speaker 5: over and she was like, you are scaring the crap
Speaker 5: out of my grandkids, and what do you And I
Speaker 5: look over at the kids and then you know, they
Speaker 5: just have like totally blank, neutral faces. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: and so you know, I explain, you know, I'm sorry
Speaker 5: we're doing this recent drunk crows. I'm happy to talk
Speaker 5: to them about science. And she's like, I think you're lying.
Speaker 5: I'm calling the police. No. Yes, I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: that's an elaborate lie. But you do you, lady, did.
Speaker 3: You take the mask off during this exchange or did
Speaker 3: you keep it on?
Speaker 5: So I was never the mask were I always had
Speaker 5: a volunteer do that. Fortunately, so she was talking to
Speaker 5: me unmasked person, and so yes, but there was a
Speaker 5: time where my volunteer. An officer drove up to one
Speaker 5: of my volunteers in the mask and made her take
Speaker 5: it off because there had just been a bank robbery.
Speaker 5: Oh no, like the day before, a masked bank robbery.
Speaker 5: So we had lots of adventures like that, and it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's one of those things where these stories
Speaker 5: can often be because they panned out, you know, it
Speaker 5: was never a problem. Can be funny to tell, but
Speaker 5: it's always you know, there's this fl of pain when
Speaker 5: I do so, because I recognize how incredibly privileged I
Speaker 5: am that the story has always ended up being fine, right,
Speaker 5: And the police were like, we believe you have a
Speaker 5: good day, right, you know, And I have to recognize
Speaker 5: that there are so many people that could not have
Speaker 5: done this work safely. And you know, there was a
Speaker 5: lot of in terms of their interactions with the police
Speaker 5: and with the general community, because another part of what
Speaker 5: I was doing with this nest searching is walking around
Speaker 5: neighborhoods with binoculars looking into people's yards. So I had
Speaker 5: to deal with the police or just with the general
Speaker 5: public a lot, and you know, most of the time
Speaker 5: people were like, oh, crows, I have to tell you
Speaker 5: this story about this crown and it ended up being wonderful.
Speaker 5: But you know, there's a certain percentage of the population
Speaker 5: that just is not ever going to be cool with
Speaker 5: you just loitering in front of their house and any capacity,
Speaker 5: but especially with binoculars.
Speaker 3: But you're like, I'm a white lady just to hear
Speaker 3: with some binoculars was like cool.
Speaker 5: I fun, Yeah, yeah, And I just you know, it
Speaker 5: was that sucks. It was good that we were able
Speaker 5: to do the research, but the broader cultural implications of
Speaker 5: that sucks. Because this research is freaking cool and every
Speaker 5: kind of person should be able to do this research safely.
Speaker 3: I love her. And now, what is your background when
Speaker 3: it comes to STEM? I saw you tweet something yesterday
Speaker 3: that got like five thousand retweets already about a little
Speaker 3: bit about your background and your lead up to getting
Speaker 3: your PhD. That maybe this wasn't wasn't a career that
Speaker 3: you would have expected or people would have expected of you.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So I mentioned earlier when I was a kid
Speaker 5: that I loved that I could just stare at bugs
Speaker 5: all day, and I did, and teachers would be like, hey,
Speaker 5: we need to learn about division right now, and I
Speaker 5: was like, division that's a street in downtown spoken and I, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I had a really hard time in school when I
Speaker 5: was in grade school, and it kind of the culminating
Speaker 5: moment was we had an art project in third grade
Speaker 5: and we had those little like pinnacle flags, you know,
Speaker 5: the triangle flags, and I had the wide end on
Speaker 5: the right hand side and the narrow end on the
Speaker 5: left hand side. And to me, it made so much
Speaker 5: sense that you're the first letter of your name should
Speaker 5: start at the wide end, and then it should go
Speaker 5: as it gets smaller, and so I wrote my whole
Speaker 5: name backwards on it. This just made so much sense
Speaker 5: to me that that's how you would do it. And
Speaker 5: my teachers are like, yeah, we can't deal with this.
Speaker 5: So they they we had a very intense parent teacher
Speaker 5: meeting where they were like, we're gonna hold Kaylee back
Speaker 5: because she cannot read and she's dyslexic. And I was like, no,
Speaker 5: I don't want to. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 5: So I went to a I switched to a school
Speaker 5: that I had a program for kids with who were
Speaker 5: behind basically who had all kinds of different learning disabilities.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and then I worked up until basically eighth grade.
Speaker 5: I was failing classes regularly. I was medicated for a
Speaker 5: little while, and I hated it, and so I told
Speaker 5: my parents, like, I have to get off this medication,
Speaker 5: like I will figure out how to make this work.
Speaker 5: And for a couple of years I didn't. I was
Speaker 5: unmedicated and I was failing my classes. Was it like
Speaker 5: an ADHD kind of riddling? Okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And I went to child therapists and you know, like
Speaker 5: learning therapists, and and it was it was really hard,
Speaker 5: and I cried and just I can remember coming home
Speaker 5: from school regularly feeling like this was every day was
Speaker 5: just the worst day ever. Because there was a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, shame coming from my I mean I
Speaker 5: had close friends, but there was a lot of shame
Speaker 5: from other kids, you know, because you're going to the
Speaker 5: to the class with the kids who were behind, and
Speaker 5: like little kids are just not always nice about that.
Speaker 5: And I just I didn't understand why this was so hard,
Speaker 5: you know, I was looking around. It was so easy
Speaker 5: for so many of my peers, and I just could
Speaker 5: not understand these words in front of me, or how
Speaker 5: I was supposed to just sit in a classroom for
Speaker 5: five hours and not just think about you know, bugs
Speaker 5: and wolves and stuff. And then I moved in right
Speaker 5: before eighth grade. We moved from Seattle or excuse me,
Speaker 5: from Spokane to Seattle, and I switched schools again, and
Speaker 5: the level that my new school was at was essentially
Speaker 5: a year behind where the school I had been at was,
Speaker 5: so I kind of got to repeat the same grade
Speaker 5: actually without being held back. And something in that eighth
Speaker 5: grade year just sort of started to click, and I
Speaker 5: had figured out tools for developing really good time management.
Speaker 5: And then kind of after that, things I started to
Speaker 5: settle into place, and school became a little bit easier
Speaker 5: for me. And now, you know, I still you can
Speaker 5: see it in my tweets, like I'm a terrible speller.
Speaker 5: I make mistakes all the time.
Speaker 3: I've never noticed. I'm always like, how do you do it?
Speaker 3: Because I'm like, you're getting your PhD, your tweets are fire,
Speaker 3: You've got this like super comprehensive blog, You're getting published
Speaker 3: in papers. I'm like, what kind of dime management does
Speaker 3: this woman happen? Because it's astounding.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, and that is one skill that I can
Speaker 5: say that I definitely have and have worked really really
Speaker 5: hard to make work for myself. So so yeah, so
Speaker 5: that was you know, kind of the story. But there
Speaker 5: were definitely, I mean, there were so many moments in
Speaker 5: my life where I was like, I'm never going to
Speaker 5: exceed and succeed. Excuse me in school, like I'm just
Speaker 5: I'm not I'm just different from these other children. And
Speaker 5: even when I applied to college, I can remember going
Speaker 5: to certain colleges to you know, the admissions office and
Speaker 5: having people be like, uh, don't waste your time. You
Speaker 5: are not going to get in here. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: and just like, well, and now you're a doctor. And
Speaker 5: now I'm a doctor, and I got an NSF grant,
Speaker 5: so screw you. There are many ways to succeed. And yeah,
Speaker 5: so that's been that's been just tremendously amazing, and I'm
Speaker 5: so you know, happy to share that story and remind
Speaker 5: people that it is painful and it is a lot
Speaker 5: of work, but people figure you know, people figured it
Speaker 5: out if you support them, if you give them tools
Speaker 5: and try new things. You know, it is possible for
Speaker 5: people to make to figure out how to make it
Speaker 5: work within this system that's really designed for a very
Speaker 5: particular type of learner.
Speaker 3: Do you think that you developed a lot of empathy
Speaker 3: that made you more interested in like animal behavior. Do
Speaker 3: you think empathy is part of what you do observing behavior?
Speaker 5: That's a great question. I mean, I maybe I consider
Speaker 5: myself an incredibly empathetic person. But I think for me,
Speaker 5: the draw to animals was that animals are so non judgmental.
Speaker 3: Right, you're like my dead brother, Yeah, and they.
Speaker 5: Just they do their thing and I could watch them
Speaker 5: from afar and they're beautiful and interesting, and so it
Speaker 5: was just such a nice escape from the classroom where
Speaker 5: I just felt like shit all the time. So I
Speaker 5: think that was that was mainly what drew me to wildlife.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I'd never thought about it that way, but
Speaker 3: but yeah, I think that when when you struggle yourself
Speaker 3: with filters and how to be and how to assimilate
Speaker 3: and how to be the person people want you to
Speaker 3: be versus what you want to be or what you
Speaker 3: struggle with, like, yeah, you look at animals and it's
Speaker 3: like I'll sit here in front of you, I'll make
Speaker 3: eye contacts and then like my buttthole they like there,
Speaker 3: and you really get to kind of see the nature
Speaker 3: being so unfiltered, And I think that is kind of
Speaker 3: a relief, And I.
Speaker 5: Think the patterns in animals can be a little bit
Speaker 5: easier to detect for some people than the patterns in
Speaker 5: human beings because humans are so complicated.
Speaker 3: And how has working in corvid thanatology changed maybe your
Speaker 3: relation to mortality or morning practices. I'm hoping that you
Speaker 3: haven't had to interface with any like human funerals, But
Speaker 3: do you find yourself looking at it differently?
Speaker 5: I know that's such a good question, and I don't
Speaker 5: have a great answer for that so far, because no,
Speaker 5: I mean, I have gone through funerals, but for people
Speaker 5: for whom death was the conclusion of a very well lived,
Speaker 5: long life and not a surprise. And I often wonder
Speaker 5: if the reason for that that there hasn't been this
Speaker 5: translation between what I do as a scientist with death
Speaker 5: and then my perspective personally, is because unlike something like
Speaker 5: a primate or a cetacean like a whale, you know,
Speaker 5: crows in some ways aren't incredibly human like. And I
Speaker 5: wonder if I was studying primates, if I would have
Speaker 5: more of that experience than I have than I have
Speaker 5: had studying crows. And I'm not sure if the answer
Speaker 5: to that, but.
Speaker 3: I feel like we need to have louder, more raucous funerals.
Speaker 3: Maybe let people scream if they want to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: someone over there is making out getting a third base.
Speaker 3: I don't know. They're like, it's morning in all ways.
Speaker 3: Can we do a quick rapid fire around?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, okay, now these are yeah, tell me how
Speaker 5: this works?
Speaker 3: Questions from listeners.
Speaker 2: Woo.
Speaker 3: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 3: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
Speaker 3: the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do?
Speaker 3: They help us give money to different charities every week.
Speaker 3: So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money,
Speaker 3: you can go to Aliyward dot com and look for
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Speaker 3: work in those fields, and this ad break allows us
Speaker 3: to give a ton of money to them. So thanks
Speaker 3: for listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions, So these
Speaker 3: are from patrons from the patroon page Sarah Preston first comment,
Speaker 3: just said, how weird and amazing, no question?
Speaker 5: Okay, agreed.
Speaker 3: Garry Jungling says, yes, do crows wear black to their funerals? Oh?
Speaker 3: Never mind, answered my own question. Look at these jokers
Speaker 3: right off the bat. I didn't screen these ahead of time,
Speaker 3: and there and then I'm finding it delightful. Dane Godding asked,
Speaker 3: have birds ever been observed using bones of other birds
Speaker 3: to build their nests?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 5: Uh, I have, to my knowledge, there's no bird that
Speaker 5: like builds a nest primarily out of bones. But I
Speaker 5: do have an example of a raven where the nestling
Speaker 5: died and so the parents just shoved it into the
Speaker 5: side of the nest and on the X tier, not
Speaker 5: even on the interior. It's not like they just scooted
Speaker 5: it out of the way. They like took it out
Speaker 5: of the nest and they just shoved it into the
Speaker 5: So does that answer your question?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, can you imagine it's just like, well,
Speaker 3: the baby died. Yeah, well we get a hole in
Speaker 3: the side of the house anyway. Wow, that's rough. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like, we didn't like it anyway. Jasmine Wells wants
Speaker 3: to know. Okay, only kind of about bird death, but
Speaker 3: kind of not. Why is a group of crows called
Speaker 3: a murderer? And do they ever murder each other?
Speaker 5: Great question? So an fyi raven A group of ravens
Speaker 5: is often called an unkindness. Both of those words are
Speaker 5: not scientific words. They're totally colloquial. So you'll you'll never
Speaker 5: hear me see a big group of crows and go
Speaker 5: oh a murder of crows.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know that. I thought that was just
Speaker 3: like what we call them, like a parliament of owls.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nope, those are totally just lay terms that you
Speaker 5: will never see in academic papers.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, we're just such wet blankets.
Speaker 3: But I mean they're not. They seem very very heavily
Speaker 3: weighted with people's own.
Speaker 5: Kind of exactly. And so that the origin of those
Speaker 5: names is probably very closely tied to the relationship that
Speaker 5: developed between human and crows during the Crusades and kind
Speaker 5: of through the medieval period, where you had a lot
Speaker 5: of dead bodies, and so you had a lot of
Speaker 5: scavengers coming to take advantage of those dead bodies. And
Speaker 5: I think that you know, the feasting on human corpses
Speaker 5: by corvids for people of that time period is a
Speaker 5: big part of what sort of cemented this this ominous
Speaker 5: bad relationship. And then to boot during the plague that
Speaker 5: because the smell was so overpowering, the doctors would wear
Speaker 5: these really black birdlike masks where they would that had
Speaker 5: like a beak, and they would stuff you know, flowers
Speaker 5: and other really strong smelling scents in there so they
Speaker 5: wouldn't pass out from the smell, and they looked like
Speaker 5: these walking ravens. Oh, so, I think that's really where
Speaker 5: it comes from. Though interestingly, you know, that's fairly unique
Speaker 5: to Western cultures. In many parts of Asia, like Japan,
Speaker 5: for example, these birds aren't signs of evil. They are
Speaker 5: the birds that hold the most wisdom. Actually, so it's
Speaker 5: important to recognize that our perspective of the cultural implications
Speaker 5: of these birds, that that is a cultural norm that's
Speaker 5: not the case globally. Now, to answer the question, do
Speaker 5: they ever murder each other totally, particularly during the breeding season,
Speaker 5: If they can, they will absolutely kill a territory intruder,
Speaker 5: and generally they try and get the bird on the
Speaker 5: ground and then they go for the wing joints and
Speaker 5: then they go for the head.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really it's brutal. And part of that is
Speaker 5: because crows engage in extra pair copulation, so you know,
Speaker 5: it might be a way to sort of keep that
Speaker 5: from happening. But yeah, they are incredibly territorial during the winter.
Speaker 5: That's really rare, and these killings they don't happen very
Speaker 5: frequently because most of the time the bird can get away.
Speaker 5: But yes, they will kill each other, and it is
Speaker 5: very dramatic when it happens because the bird that's the
Speaker 5: victm produces this really specific distress call and that is
Speaker 5: like a magnet for crows, and they all come in
Speaker 5: and they'll attack the bird that's being attacked, or sometimes
Speaker 5: they'll attack the attacker and the other A really common
Speaker 5: myth is that they will execute crows that failed at
Speaker 5: their job of watchmen, and there's no evidence of that really, but.
Speaker 3: There are crows that are watchmen.
Speaker 5: So so like in a group feeding situation, you're always
Speaker 5: going to have some birds that are are more sentinels.
Speaker 5: You know, they're on more alert and any you know,
Speaker 5: whenever you see groups of animals feeding in the same place,
Speaker 5: you'll see these kinds of patterns, and so a lot
Speaker 5: of people think, you know, if a bird didn't do
Speaker 5: its job watching out for the group and a predator
Speaker 5: comes in, that they'll like go and you know, seek
Speaker 5: revenge on that Birden, there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I never heard that. Okay, So Maria
Speaker 3: Kumer wants to know what's been the strangest thing you
Speaker 3: learned so far in your study of this, that.
Speaker 5: They have sex with dead grows.
Speaker 3: Charlotte Milling wants to know what is the evolutionary significance
Speaker 3: of covid grieving behavior and if there isn't any why
Speaker 3: would it become a thing?
Speaker 5: Great question. So I think the answer to that is,
Speaker 5: and we've been able to demonstrate some aspects of this
Speaker 5: in our research, that it is a way for them
Speaker 5: to learn about and avoid danger. And I think that's,
Speaker 5: you know, probably going to be the crux, the sort
Speaker 5: of seed of these behaviors in most animals, including ourselves.
Speaker 5: If you're a social species and you are capable of
Speaker 5: the kind of rapid complex learning that crows and other
Speaker 5: you know, primates and cetaceans and humans are capable of,
Speaker 5: it makes sense that if you see a dead member
Speaker 5: of your species, you'd be like, uh, oh, what happened?
Speaker 5: Like how do I make sure this doesn't happen to me?
Speaker 5: And so I really think that that's kind of the
Speaker 5: foundation of this behavior, and from there, I think can
Speaker 5: and in compliment to that, I think you can include
Speaker 5: a lot of other motivations too, But I think that's
Speaker 5: probably the adaptive reason how it starts.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Jen Evans had a great question do
Speaker 3: crows react differently to a natural death old age versus
Speaker 3: an unnatural death like an injury or poisoning, Because if
Speaker 3: they're doing it to learn how not to have it happen,
Speaker 3: are they like how do I not get old and die?
Speaker 3: Like does that you ever enter their brains?
Speaker 5: Great question? And I don't know the answer to that,
Speaker 5: but that I mean that certainly could have been another
Speaker 5: one of the aspects I looked at, you know, in
Speaker 5: terms of my graduate studies, and it wasn't. But that's
Speaker 5: one of the next steps I absolutely think that we
Speaker 5: should take in this line of questioning.
Speaker 3: For real, it's like someone else, get on it, pass
Speaker 3: the mask down. What I mean, You're like, you're on deck,
Speaker 3: go to the park with a clipboard. Oki wants to
Speaker 3: know do crows visit the burial place of other crows
Speaker 3: and do they bring offerings to pay their respects? You
Speaker 3: mentioned that sometimes you see them toss sticks over there.
Speaker 5: Mostly I don't know. My suspicion is that once they
Speaker 5: come in and do their thing, they're not coming back, right,
Speaker 5: because that's an energy investment, but it's also could be dangerous, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, you could have scavengers lurking in that area.
Speaker 5: And in fact, my research suggests that crows are more
Speaker 5: wary in the places, the immediate locations where they find
Speaker 5: dead crows in the days that follow. So my guess
Speaker 5: would be that you know they're not coming in to
Speaker 5: check those locations, even from afar, once they go through
Speaker 5: their thing.
Speaker 3: And what usually kills crows? Are we talking hawks, we're
Speaker 3: talking babies.
Speaker 5: It depends on the age class first year birds. So
Speaker 5: baby crows have about a fifty percent survivorship rate in
Speaker 5: places like Seattle, and they're getting taken out by things
Speaker 5: like cars and cats and you know, windows, strikes and
Speaker 5: just lots of stuff. Adult crows have a much higher
Speaker 5: survivorship about eighty percent, and they're getting killed by things
Speaker 5: like redtail hawks and eagles and great horn dolls.
Speaker 3: And sometimes they'll kill it, eat part of it and
Speaker 3: then just like peace out.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, yeah, they like I'm done here.
Speaker 3: That would confuse me because like if I order a burrito,
Speaker 3: I'm finishing the burrito, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you gotta think, like, especially in an urban environment,
Speaker 5: there's they're having to contend with a lot of disruptions.
Speaker 5: So sometimes it's just not worth it because you know,
Speaker 5: somebody's walking their dog, like you gotta fly up and
Speaker 5: then you're like, we're gonna just wait here. I could
Speaker 5: just go catch another one or maybe I'm full or whatever.
Speaker 3: Little to go boxes. Yeah, they're talents. I get. That's
Speaker 3: wrapped up. Donna tell Austin wants to know. Can you
Speaker 3: determine the cause of death just by looking or you know,
Speaker 3: watching the decomposition of a bird? Uh?
Speaker 5: No, I can't. There are people there are amazing Avian pathologists,
Speaker 5: folks that work for you know, government agencies whose job
Speaker 5: it is that is their whole job is that they
Speaker 5: get bodies sent to them and they have to figure
Speaker 5: out the cause of death to try and figure out
Speaker 5: if somebody is doing something you know that requires legal action.
Speaker 5: But I'm not that person. I can look and you
Speaker 5: know feathers have been pulled out. It's clearly a raptor
Speaker 5: that did it. If the neck is broken and they're
Speaker 5: by a house, it's probably a window strike. If it's disease,
Speaker 5: I mean, that can be really hard to detect unless
Speaker 5: you do a necropsy where you actually cut the bird open.
Speaker 3: So just looking at it, you can't be like it
Speaker 3: died of sadness, no checking. Ariel wants to note do
Speaker 3: crows ever engage in cannibalism?
Speaker 5: That's a yes, right, yes, so are It has been observed,
Speaker 5: But it's really really rare. So I think I think
Speaker 5: a lot of people would guess if they didn't know
Speaker 5: much about crows, aside from the fact that these are
Speaker 5: birds that they see eat a lot of garbage and roadkill,
Speaker 5: they might guess that they are totally eating dead crows
Speaker 5: all the time. And it seems like a pretty rare
Speaker 5: behavior that's more biased towards inexperienced younger birds.
Speaker 3: Wow, so they're not living up to the murder name
Speaker 3: necessarily interesting. Jordan O wants to know why do crows
Speaker 3: gather in such large numbers at certain times of the year.
Speaker 3: I'm talking thousands.
Speaker 5: Yes for they say, yeah, great questions. So crows engage
Speaker 5: in what we call communal roosting, and this is not
Speaker 5: an uncommon behavior in birds.
Speaker 3: So during the mating season, the spring break, swipe right,
Speaker 3: let's get it on season, it's all couple skate all
Speaker 3: the time. But when there's a chill in the air
Speaker 3: and the leaves drop, things change.
Speaker 5: Come fall, crows start to all group together and sleep
Speaker 5: in central locations called russ so in Seattle, for example.
Speaker 5: And I totally recommend you check this out alley if
Speaker 5: you have enough time. We have two big roosts and
Speaker 5: one of them is at the U dub Bathel campus
Speaker 5: that house about fifteen thousand birds every night. What it's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And you stand there's this incredible viewing area on top
Speaker 5: of one of the parking lots and it's just a river,
Speaker 5: a river of crows, Oh my god, and it's incredible.
Speaker 3: I looked up a video of this and it seems
Speaker 3: like cgi it's this gorgeous tide in the dusky sky,
Speaker 3: and it's beautiful and captivating and yes, a little scary,
Speaker 3: kind of like watching a thunderstorm or an activated mob
Speaker 3: shuffling through the mall on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 5: Ravens do this too, and it's probably driven by a
Speaker 5: couple of different things. The main one is predator a version, right,
Speaker 5: safety in numbers, but it might also serve as you know,
Speaker 5: an information exchange center. There isn't good evidence of that
Speaker 5: in crows, but there's really good evidence of that in ravens.
Speaker 5: Actually where they go to roost to tell other ravens
Speaker 5: about where food is. Yes, which is we can get
Speaker 5: into that, but it's not an altruistic thing. It's just
Speaker 5: a I need buddies in order to like get this food.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's where they meet, you know, socialize and meet
Speaker 5: potential mates or whatever. But but yeah, so that that,
Speaker 5: you know, the rivers of crows or the big numbers
Speaker 5: at certain times of years is basically during the non
Speaker 5: breeding season, crows all get together at night to sleep,
Speaker 5: mostly for safety and numbers, but probably for other reasons too.
Speaker 3: Is it wrong to find that cute?
Speaker 5: No, it's like a big sleepover. I know it's cute,
Speaker 5: I know it's so, and it's just it's powerful. And
Speaker 5: one of the things I always like to tell people is, uh,
Speaker 5: for folks living in urban areas, we watch things like
Speaker 5: Planet Earth and we see these amazing animal migrations caribou
Speaker 5: and will debase or the you know, monarch butterflies, and
Speaker 5: you're like this, oh my gosh, that's so cool, Like
Speaker 5: I want to see something like that in my life,
Speaker 5: and you can, because this is a totally natural behavior
Speaker 5: that crows do where they group in these big numbers,
Speaker 5: And if you live in a place like Seattle or
Speaker 5: many other metropolitan areas across the country, you can watch
Speaker 5: crows gather in the tens to hundreds of thousands, depending
Speaker 5: on where you are, and you can have that experience
Speaker 5: of this mass collection of wildlife. And I just think
Speaker 5: that one of my favorite parts about crows is this
Speaker 5: opportunity that they present for people living in areas where
Speaker 5: they maybe otherwise don't feel a huge connection to the
Speaker 5: natural world or to natural spaces, to really engage with
Speaker 5: this animal that is native to that area and participates
Speaker 5: in so many cool behaviors, whether it's this mass roosting
Speaker 5: or just how smart they are and this attentiveness that
Speaker 5: they have to us, and so for the urban nite,
Speaker 5: they are just such an incredible opportunity for natural history
Speaker 5: and for wildlife feeling.
Speaker 3: So you can have an Attenborough moment, like in the
Speaker 3: middle of downtown. Yeah, up to some crows.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 3: That's really inspiring because that is that is one of
Speaker 3: those birds we take for granted so much, so much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but they staring at them.
Speaker 5: I know, But they're just they belong in our urban spaces.
Speaker 5: They got there naturally, and shit, they just do so
Speaker 5: many cool things. I mean they play.
Speaker 3: Do they play?
Speaker 5: Yes, they do. And one of my favorite I have
Speaker 5: two great playing stories. One of them was so all
Speaker 5: over Seattle, we have these ornamental trees called sweet gum trees. Yes,
Speaker 5: they're the ones that make the sidewalks really sticky, and
Speaker 5: they have these circular like ping pong sized cones and
Speaker 5: they're really spiky. But if you like, you know, get
Speaker 5: your foot on top of them, kind of roll your
Speaker 5: foot around, you can smush down all the spikes and
Speaker 5: then they just like lit literally turn into a ping pong.
Speaker 5: And I was out at Green Lake and I saw
Speaker 5: this crow and it had one and it would fly
Speaker 5: up into the air and it would drop it and
Speaker 5: then it would fly down and catch it right before
Speaker 5: it landed on the ground. And it did it you know,
Speaker 5: five times until I took my phone out to videotape
Speaker 5: and then I was like, oh no, I'm done. I
Speaker 5: don't share these stories to like create this hierarchy of
Speaker 5: things that we should appreciate. But like, these behaviors you're
Speaker 5: not going to see in chickadees. You're going to see
Speaker 5: other cool things in chickade's. But there is something really
Speaker 5: special about crows, and I encourage people who just think
Speaker 5: of them as these like icky trash birds to watch
Speaker 5: them and appreciate that there's this really soft side. You know,
Speaker 5: they mate for life and they can live to be
Speaker 5: seventeen years old, and they spend a lot of time
Speaker 5: reinforcing that bond and it's adorable. Yeah, they go so alo.
Speaker 5: Preening is the main way that birds do that, which
Speaker 5: means mutual grooming. So you'll see one bird kind of
Speaker 5: like tilt its head down and the other one who
Speaker 5: use its beak and it'll sort of like you know,
Speaker 5: groom the feathers on the neck and around the face,
Speaker 5: you know, the area where the individual can't reach, so
Speaker 5: that you'll see that really typically and they're watching you back, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, like again, chickens are cool. And do a
Speaker 5: lot of cool things.
Speaker 3: That is nuts to think that the crow is like,
Speaker 3: well they got in the melt again? Are They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: who's this guy coming over? Yeah? Id nuts, it is okay,
Speaker 3: prepare for this sweetest story that you may not be
Speaker 3: able to handle. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 5: On my blog, I used to talk a lot more
Speaker 5: about Go, which Go was one of my first data points.
Speaker 5: It was a bird that I did my one of
Speaker 5: my subjects for my first field experiment. And then after
Speaker 5: that experiment ended, because part of that experiment was feeding
Speaker 5: the birds. It had gotten used to me, you know,
Speaker 5: coming every day and putting food on the ground. And
Speaker 5: I was never the scary person, so they sort of
Speaker 5: continued like me after the steady ends. And it was
Speaker 5: a campus bird. It was right by my bus stop actually,
Speaker 5: and so after the experiment ended, Go and whose name
Speaker 5: is derived from her bands which was green over orange,
Speaker 5: would always like, you know, fly over to me and
Speaker 5: be like, hey, what's up?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 5: Am I going to get that peanut? And and it
Speaker 5: was this amazing I loved. My favorite part about it
Speaker 5: was when I was walking, I could hear her bands jingle,
Speaker 5: so I could hear when she was following me around
Speaker 5: and it was just like there's I mean, just you
Speaker 5: feel like it's no white. It's just amazing to have
Speaker 5: this wild animal that's like, I know, you can I
Speaker 5: have some food.
Speaker 3: That is weird because you just think that they'd be
Speaker 3: so indifferent to you, but it's like but they yeah.
Speaker 5: And that's the difference between crows and a lot of
Speaker 5: birds because you can hand you know, you can train
Speaker 5: a lot like Chickene's. I don't know why I picked them.
Speaker 3: But Chickeny's are like what what who meets?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: But you can you know, like in Stanley Park and Vancouver,
Speaker 5: for example, there's a or there used to be a
Speaker 5: place where you know, there's a there's a guy and
Speaker 5: he'd hand you a little bird seed and you'd put
Speaker 5: it in your palm and the chickaties would flock to you,
Speaker 5: right because they learned that it's okay to feed from people.
Speaker 5: But they're not discriminating among those people versus crows are
Speaker 5: like you, you feed me, and I'm cool with you,
Speaker 5: and I will get close to you, but not to
Speaker 5: these other people. And it's just incredible. And the reason
Speaker 5: I said, I used to talk a lot more about go,
Speaker 5: is she she died last year? No?
Speaker 3: How do you know?
Speaker 5: Because because she was banded. When somebody found her body,
Speaker 5: they reported her and what happened we don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was it was the middle of summer, so her
Speaker 5: body had already decomposed, you know, beyond our ability to detect.
Speaker 5: But she was at least sixteen whoa so yeah.
Speaker 3: Good life. So she maybe died of old age.
Speaker 5: Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 3: So they gave her a good send off.
Speaker 5: I hope so too. And I collected her body, you did,
Speaker 5: I did so. I actually I have her bands, you
Speaker 5: do I have? I have her bones and her bands
Speaker 5: in a little box, and I my husband, for a
Speaker 5: graduation present, actually commissioned a portrait of her. So I
Speaker 5: think I'm going to create like a shadow box with
Speaker 5: her with the picture medicine may feel at the illustration.
Speaker 5: She's an amazing natural history illustrator based out of Australia,
Speaker 5: and so I'm gonna have a little shadow box with
Speaker 5: her portrait and then her bands because I like loved
Speaker 5: this bird so much. Yeah, she was this Yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't know how to describe it. It's just incredible. When
Speaker 5: you found out, Oh I cried, Yeah, and I have
Speaker 5: a whole blog post about saying goodbye to her, and
Speaker 5: because she you know, I did this research because I
Speaker 5: love these birds, and because she was really close to
Speaker 5: my office, Like I said, once the experiment was over
Speaker 5: and I could start to engage with her, you know,
Speaker 5: in a more casual way, in an uncontrolled way, I
Speaker 5: would often go to her territory when I was just
Speaker 5: like bent out of shape and stressed, and she would
Speaker 5: fly over to me and I would look at her
Speaker 5: and you know, give her peanut or whatever, and it
Speaker 5: just sort of would re inspire me to keep doing
Speaker 5: the work I was doing because I was like, I
Speaker 5: love these birds. Everyone needs to love these birds.
Speaker 3: Like I wonder if this is going to make anyone
Speaker 3: make a new crow friend at the bust up?
Speaker 5: You totally should. I mean, you know, don't don't overdo
Speaker 5: it with the food, because you can sort of exceed
Speaker 5: the carrying capacity of your neighborhood and it can be consequential.
Speaker 5: But you know, I always have, you know, a couple
Speaker 5: of peanuts in my pocket. Really yeah, And then you know,
Speaker 5: I see a crown I tossed a nut.
Speaker 3: And you're like, okay, what's up? Yeah, do you really
Speaker 3: always have peanuts in your pocket. Yeah, that's the best.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's makes doing laundry kind of annoying for my husband.
Speaker 3: Sometimes, Oh my god, no, what is that? What is
Speaker 3: the shittiest thing about your job? I mean, I imagine
Speaker 3: the passing of a beloved specimen, but what sucks about
Speaker 3: what you do?
Speaker 5: Uh? The hardest thing about what I was doing was
Speaker 5: was working in an environment where I really regularly had
Speaker 5: to deal with people. Because that was often also the
Speaker 5: best part, right, because I mean that's where my science
Speaker 5: communication took off, was just having to explain constantly what
Speaker 5: I was doing. But you know, sometimes when you're just
Speaker 5: you're I'm at work. When I'm there, right, it'd be
Speaker 5: like people constantly coming up to you and whatever job
Speaker 5: you're doing, being like, hey, what are you doing? Can
Speaker 5: you explain it to me? And then the best was
Speaker 5: when I'd be like, you know, oh, I'm doing I'm
Speaker 5: with the University of Washington. I'm doing this field study
Speaker 5: on crows. But you know what, my birds they're here.
Speaker 5: I gotta take data. You know, I'll be done in
Speaker 5: thirty minutes, happy to come back. If you want to
Speaker 5: point out your house and I'll tell you more and
Speaker 5: they'd be like, oh, no, I totally get it. That's cool.
Speaker 5: So the other day, though, I want to and I
Speaker 5: just be like, I feel like you're not listening to me.
Speaker 5: And so sometimes it'd be a little bit frustrating the
Speaker 5: day to day of making a field experiment work when
Speaker 5: you are combating people walking their dogs or people using
Speaker 5: leaf blowers. I hate leaf blowers. They're the worst. And
Speaker 5: they'd be like, oh, it's a dead crowlier, let me
Speaker 5: blow it away with my leaf blower. And I'm just like, no, God,
Speaker 5: I've been here for hours and you just ruined. Oh no.
Speaker 5: That part just, you know, after years of this kind
Speaker 5: of urban field work is really it just grates on you.
Speaker 5: And just especially when I was working in downtown Seattle,
Speaker 5: just a number of times where I just genuinely felt unsafe.
Speaker 5: You know, where I was, I'm, you know, a woman,
Speaker 5: There's lots of people around, and yet sometimes you know,
Speaker 5: you get that dude and he's just staring and he's
Speaker 5: too close, and You're like, I just want to be
Speaker 5: in the woods.
Speaker 3: You're like going to go in the safety where there's
Speaker 3: just wolves and badgers.
Speaker 5: Exactly, which is why I'm going to Denali. Next, I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm ready to have to worry about different kinds of predators.
Speaker 3: Now what is I don't even know how you going
Speaker 3: to answer this, but what is the best thing about
Speaker 3: what you do? What do you love the most about
Speaker 3: crows or about your work, or about the work that
Speaker 3: you did to get your PhD ah.
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like this whole podcast has been
Speaker 5: the answer to that question. I mean, the thing I
Speaker 5: love most about crows is that they are so interesting
Speaker 5: and they are full of surprises, which sometimes was the
Speaker 5: worst thing, right because then I'd be like, God, damn it,
Speaker 5: why can't you just make this work? I am trying
Speaker 5: so hard. But yeah, I mean, just the day to
Speaker 5: day of getting to watch an animal that's so interesting
Speaker 5: and dynamic is amazing. Getting to talk to people about
Speaker 5: this animal and watch them light up when they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: can I tell you my crows story, or just that
Speaker 5: moment of people saying wow, I had no idea. I
Speaker 5: guess crows are maybe cooler than I thought. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's kind of like at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: that shift is how we build empathy with the natural world.
Speaker 5: So you know, all of those things, That's why I
Speaker 5: do it. That's why I love it.
Speaker 3: And where can people find your work? Because you tweet magnificently.
Speaker 5: Thank you, so folks can find me Corvid Research Just
Speaker 5: to short answer that question. Corvid Research on Twitter, Corvid
Speaker 5: Research on Instagram, Corverdresearch dot blog.
Speaker 3: Good job, continuity of socials is so helpful.
Speaker 5: Yes it is.
Speaker 3: You really had good foresight on that, and so people
Speaker 3: can reach out, share with you cool pictures of birds,
Speaker 3: maybe ask you questions. Yeah, so, thank you so so
Speaker 3: much for being here. I'm never gonna look at it
Speaker 3: grow the same.
Speaker 5: Good h that's my job.
Speaker 3: So I did my job, and I think for Halloween,
Speaker 3: I want to be someone researching crows. Yes that's my costume.
Speaker 5: Thank you again, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: So find smart people, ask them stupid questions, whether it's
Speaker 3: your huge science hero or if it's a lady feeding
Speaker 3: a peanut to a bird at a bus stop.
Speaker 2: Hu.
Speaker 3: That was a trick because in this case they could
Speaker 3: be the same person. So once again, find and follow
Speaker 3: doctor Kaylee Swift. She's at Corvid Research on Instagram, on Twitter.
Speaker 3: The blog is Corvidresearch dot blog. Look up her videos
Speaker 3: on YouTube. She's Kaylee Swift on there, and keep an
Speaker 3: eye out for more of her published work. And the
Speaker 3: next time you see a crow, look up, maybe give
Speaker 3: it a little thumbs up because they deserve our respect.
Speaker 3: They are very complex animals. Also be nice because they
Speaker 3: will fucking remember if you are a mean JABRONI to them.
Speaker 3: You can follow ologies at Ologies on Twitter and on Instagram,
Speaker 3: and I'm Ali Ward with one L on both. More
Speaker 3: links are up at aliward dot com, slash ologies and
Speaker 3: patreon dot com. Slash Ologies is where you go to
Speaker 3: become a patron if you want to submit questions to
Speaker 3: the ologists before I record. You can be a patron
Speaker 3: for as little as a dollar a month twenty five
Speaker 3: cents an episode. My heart is cheap Ologiesmarch dot com
Speaker 3: has cool shirts and hats and pins so you can
Speaker 3: find their ologites in the wild. Thank you Shannon Feltas
Speaker 3: and Bonnie Dutch for managing that The ologies Facebook group
Speaker 3: is full of the kind and the curious, and it
Speaker 3: is moderated by the kind and the curious Hannah Lippo
Speaker 3: and Aaron Talbert. The theme song was written and performed
Speaker 3: by Nick Thorber of the band Islands, and all the
Speaker 3: audio stitching together is done by the lovely genius Stephen
Speaker 3: Ray Morris, who also hosts the per cast about cats
Speaker 3: and Sea Jurassic Wright, which is a podcast about dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: Also quickly, a few things to mark in blood with
Speaker 3: a quill on your calendar this Halloween week. On November two,
Speaker 3: a Netflix original series called Brainchild drops, and your old
Speaker 3: pod Dad is in every episode with a beehive and
Speaker 3: a space age silver suit explaining science things. And it's
Speaker 3: four kids, so there's zero bad words in it. You're welcome,
Speaker 3: so check that out November second. Also, my science show
Speaker 3: on CW, also kid friendly, is called did I Mention
Speaker 3: Invention that airs every Saturday. On November three. In La,
Speaker 3: the International Maloma Foundation is doing a comedy celebration benefit
Speaker 3: for multiple maeloma research. You can see the hematology where
Speaker 3: I talk to a researcher, doctor Brian Durry, about that
Speaker 3: it happens to be a cancer my dad has, so
Speaker 3: I'm quite invested in it. Performers at the comedy celebration
Speaker 3: include Cristella Alonso, Jim Jeffries, Natasha Lajero, Gabriel Iglesias, Sishir
Speaker 3: Zamata from SNL. Tickets start at fifty bucks and Comedy
Speaker 3: dot Maloma dot org is where to get them. I
Speaker 3: will also be hosting a live stream on Facebook that
Speaker 3: night from the Red Carpet Durp, so you can watch
Speaker 3: that from home if you like. November six, my fellow Americans,
Speaker 3: please vote in the midterms, as you'll learn next week
Speaker 3: in an episode all about the apocalypse for real, it
Speaker 3: does matter. Also, it's my birthday that day, so please
Speaker 3: don't make me cry my birthday.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: And at the end of each episode, I do tell
Speaker 3: you a secret for those who stick it out past
Speaker 3: the credits. This secret just happened like ten minutes ago.
Speaker 3: I'm wearing a hoodie I wear all the time. It's
Speaker 3: very cozy. I just reached in the pocket and there
Speaker 3: was a dried, wizened tiny lemon in the pocket. It's
Speaker 3: like almost ossified. I have no idea how long it's
Speaker 3: been there. I don't know when this got in my pocket.
Speaker 3: My estimate is at least one month. How has this
Speaker 3: tiny dead lemon not fallen out of the pocket before?
Speaker 3: How have I not realized this? It is the horseplay
Speaker 3: of a ghost, Okay, that's it. Pacodermatologyology or no zoology, lithology,
Speaker 3: anology meteorology, manology, ethnology, zereology, elinology.
Speaker 1: It's Russell Crowe, Cameron Crowe, pro Diddley, Hume, Crowning, Greig Repick.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm very uncomfortable having a gang of crows.
Speaker 4: In our bedroom.
Speaker 3: It's a murder, Honey, a group of crows.
Speaker 5: It's called a murder.