For other researchers like McCoy, the concern is more focused on continuing to use non-invasive procedures like FDG-PET to study these animals further. “I think we need to be very careful about doing invasive studies on brain tissue and function in crows,” McCoy states. “They are smart birds who feel emotions and understand fear and pain. Let’s design non-invasive studies that work with the crows and release them back into the wild after a summer of behavioral observations.”
Maybe there is hope for us to become what we claim to be after all…
I think they’ve got the headline wrong way ‘round.
only if our ancestral amniotes also do. birds and mammals diverged back before there were birds… or mammals. ( eta: it’s maybe brain complexity itself, or something like co-evolution for the shared ability )
Turtles off there on the left doin their own thing. No branching off, no extinctions, just out there turtling all the way down.
It’s an old tree though. Now turtles are understood to be the closest living relatives of crocodilians and birds, so branching off after lizards and snakes (and tuataras). They are so very specialized it’s been hard to relate them to extinct groups but from new fossils might fit in near aquatic groups like placodonts and plesiosaurs.
Still doing their thing for a very long time, of course.
Very strange to me to think of turtles as being one of the closest living relatives to birds. Maybe I can console myself in that they both lay eggs.
This leucistic corvid has its own paparazzi -
Penguins. Birds that are a lot like turtles.
although, suddenly, the twelve days of christmas song makes a lot more sense
Seems like getting off the ground would be unnecessarily harder, though.
good air defense though. you can never trust a partridge with ready access to pears.
hense
That is the best thing I’ve seen today
Tags by @spiritboardvalentine:
#a few months ago i witnessed a huge ass raven violently yank a fast food bag out of an over stuffed trash can, then started munching fries
#then noticed the sweet and sour sauce that was half opened. Dipped the fry and ate it. looked like it had a religious experience.
#according to Google birds can taste sweet and sour so that raven just unlocked a whole new world of taste i think about this at least weekly
#also the raven was trying to scare off every other bird in the area the whole time, their fucking fries
#we were on a roadtrip for somewhat urgent reasons but my dad and I just sat in the van watching this happen for multiple minutes dumbfounded
#that’s been my bird story of the day
Lawyer Crow is a woman in an LA highrise who feeds the local crows all kindsa good stuff. Her videos are often irreverently titled and always cool.
I like how after the whole yolks are gone, they crows keep looking around as if to ask, “Is this it? No more whole yolks?” Or perhaps, “Free food? Is this a trick?” Or, both.
