David Craig, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of Biology at Willamette University, discusses his research on crow behavior, in particular crows' ability to recognize faces.

2. Friends or Foes: Facing the
Facts About American Crows
David P. Craig
Willamette University - Department of Biology

13. Who
knows
what this
is ?

14. The Rook (Corvus frugilegus)
i.e. the food-gathering crow of Eurasia

15. Everybody has a crow story

16. Everybody has a crow story

17. Everybody has a crow story

18. Everybody has a crow story

34. ‘Welcome to Science Whitewing” “I got him, John!” “How was your climb?”

35. Predator Recognition by Crows

36. Crow Call TypesCaw
Scold

38. Sociality and Relatively Large
Brains May Enable Discrimination

41. Can You Tell the Difference Between
Dick Cheney and a Caveman?
CheneyCaveman

44. CheneyCaveman
Can Crows Tell the Difference Between
Dick Cheney and a Caveman?

47. Two Main Questions
1) Can wild American Crows learn to
recognize individual people?
2) Does social learning take place?

48. What About Ordinary Faces?

49. Study Treatments
• Ten trials per site
• Nine treatments per trial
– Negative mask
– Five neutral masks
– Negative mask + armband
– Two neutral masks + armband

50. The dangerous
face is always
recognized, and
especially likely
to attract a mob,
but not perfectly.

52. Two Mask Trials
• One mask at a time
• Choice among masks

54. When forced to select the Dangerous from a Neutral Mask,
when both were presented simultaneously, Crows accurately
discriminated among all the ordinary masks.

55. Two Main Questions
1) Can American Crows learn to recognize
individual people?
2) Does social learning take place?

56. Acquisition of Information
• Individual “trial and error” Learning
– Allows Flexibility,
– But Dangerous
• Social Learning
– Flexible
– Reduced Cost

57. Three Opportunities for
Observational Learning
1) At time of capture
2) Associating with
crows who were
captured when they
encounter the
trapping mask at a
later date
3) Young of crows who
had been captured

58. Spread in the
Geographical
Extent of Scolding
the Extraordinary
Face over 2.8
Years

59. Urban Site (B.)
shows a result
similar to the pilot
study but not
elsewhere (A.)
Downtown urban site has
similar density and
unpredictable identity of
humans as does the pilot
campus site
Dangerous mask
downtown was bald man,
most similar to
extraordinary face from
campus

60. Individuals with the Direct Experience of Being Captured
Learned to Discriminate Faces More Accurately Than Those
Only Observing Capture or Subsequent Scolding of Captors

61. Vertical Learning
• We put a radio tag on young
crows (without ourselves
wearing a mask) whose
parents scold the dangerous
mask
• While under parental care,
the young observe their
parents scold the dangerous
mask
• Independent of parental care,
the young crow scolds the
dangerous mask

62. Crow Paradox

63. Face Recognition

65. Halloween Mask Sales on Amazon
Predicted Election

67. San OnOfre
aka
St OnuphriuS
by the SpaniSh painter,
franciScO
cOllanteS
(1599-1656)
MuSeO del pradO

68. CULT of CORAX