Feature:
Why did the crow cross the road? Because it
understood traffic: study
“OTTAWA- Crows are smart…
New findings in a science journal
published in Ottawa
show they can even navigate lanes of traffic on a busy road.
This puts them ahead of supposedly
smart mammals, such as deer, squirrel, & humans using cellphones.
The study in the Canadian Field
Naturalist says crows are highly unusual because they ‘can detect the
directionality of oncoming vehicles on a road &, like humans, actively move
out of the way or switch lanes to avoid death based on an understanding of the
behavior of vehicular traffic’.
Shomen Mukherjee is a biologist at Florida International University.
He realized that good vision is part of the key…
Mukherjee & his team drove a
pickup truck along a 2- lane Florida
state road at 80-90 kilometres an hour & watched for crows on the road.
‘Unsurprisingly, American Crows
feeding in the same lane as the approaching vehicle always flew off’…
‘But interestingly, a significant
proportion of American Crows in the opposite lane chose to remain on the road’…
This showed that the crows are able
to adapt to traffic & comprehend its ‘directionality’, understanding where
cars posed a threat & where the road was safe…
Wild species that adapt to living in
cities are generally the ones that learn to take risks in feeding…
‘These traits have likely
contributed to the success of American Crows in urban environments’.
Mukherjee’s truck didn’t hit any
crows.”
Tom
Spears
POSTMEDIA
NEWS
The Montreal Gazette
Dec.
28/2013
Cute Critter Pic
Weekly Chuckle
Canadian
Links:
Humane Society: https://www.humanesociety.com/
International Fund for Animal
Welfare: www.ifaw.org/canada/
U.S.
Links:
Humane Hollywood: http://www.humanehollywood.org
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