A Sentience Article from All-Creatures.org



Crow Cosmopolitics: Exploring Crow–Human Coexistence

From Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today / Animal Emotions
August 2023

Crows are a synanthropic species, which simply means that they tend to live close to humans and adapt to human ways of life. My research explores how we humans might better understand, and adapt to the crows' ways of life, and why this is important.

Many people harbor a dislike for crows, often based on myths and negative narratives. Crows are highly intelligent birds who culturally coevolved with humans. What is remarkable about crows is their curiosity, creativity, and constant observation of other species. 

Crow face
Image from Julie Morley

Crows are highly intelligent, sentient, and emotional birds. They live all over the place and I've spent many hours watching them sitting near my home and clearly taking in what was happening around them and playing on the fly while windsurfing here and there. I've also had the pleasure of having crows follow me and my dogs when we were walking or hiking in the mountains outside of Boulder, and on many occasions I was sure they were talking to us and that they knew us well.

Crows also are known to make up after fighting and seek consolation, and to grieve the loss of friends and family.

Because of my interest in these fascinating, ever-present corvids, I was especially pleased to learn about Dr. Julie Morley's doctoral dissertation "Crow Cosmopolitics: A Multispecies Walking Ethnography Exploring Crow–Human Coexistential Placemaking."

Here's what she had to say about her work.

windsurfing crows
Windsurfing crows. Image from Julie Morley

Marc Bekoff: Why did you do your Ph.D. research on "Crow Cosmopolitics?"

Julie Morley: Crow Cosmopolitics emerged as my dissertation work, after years of being an author and environmental educator, as well as from watching and photographing birds. I have had a special relationship with corvids (crows, in particular).

Crows are highly intelligent birds who are culturally coevolved with humans—we are very entangled species, historically and prehistorically. The corvid-human relationship has been deeply intertwined on most continents (except for parts of South America and Antarctica).

Crows are a synanthropic species, which simply means that they tend to live close to humans and adapt to human ways of life. My research explores how we humans might better understand, and adapt to the crow’s ways of life, and why this is important.

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Please read the ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE.

soccer playing Crows
Crows playing soccer. Image from Julie Morley
 


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