Putting the "crow" in necrophilia
July 16, 2018 9:05 AM   Subscribe

It’s early April 2015, and John Marzluff and I are standing with a film crew attempting to capture some footage of a crow funeral to compliment a story they are working on about Gabi Mann. I’ve already set the dead crow on the ground, it’s placed just out from a cherry tree resplendent in springtime blossoms. After only a few moments of waiting, the first crow arrives and alights on the tree.
posted by sciatrix (41 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
You have to admit, crows never cease to surprise...
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:14 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Can someone save me from actually having to RTFA and give me the tweet version of why crows would presumably fuck their dead? I don't think I have it in me to actually read that.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:20 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Instead, what we think happens is that during the breeding season, some birds simply can’t mediate a stimulus (the dead crow) that triggers different behaviors, so instead they respond with all of them. This may be because the crow is less experienced, or more aggressive, or has some neurological issue with suppressing inappropriate responses. "
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:20 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


This whole field of study has been a fascinating but belabored route to the simple conclusion that crows are evil.
posted by cribcage at 9:31 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


excuse you, crows are great

you know what the very first species documented engaging in necrophilia is?

go on, guess

I bet there's one in the room you're in right now
posted by sciatrix at 9:34 AM on July 16, 2018 [34 favorites]


This is fascinating and reminds me a bit of Hope, the current peregrine falcon resident at the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh. She seems to have an unusual reaction (for her species) to her hatchings where she sometimes consumes her young or feeds them to her other hatchlings like they are prey. After hatching she is a good mother but something about the hatching process goes wrong for her. It reminds me that the way we talk about animal (and human) behavior is sometimes overly mechanistic, like every response must have a rational and consistent stimulus.
posted by muddgirl at 9:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm surprised their research didn't find the seminal paper "The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos, which appears to confirm the behavior in other avians.
posted by caphector at 9:37 AM on July 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


Birds can get really hot and bothered at times. I have learned this from parrots I have owned. Best to get them a toy to do the "happy dance" with. Rather than your hand. Or ear.
posted by Splunge at 9:40 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


I don't follow the relevance of whether X was documented before Y, but if you're referring to that bit about always being within six feet of a spider...yep, also evil. Take note, budding filmmakers: The Birds + Arachnophobia = Academy Award.
posted by cribcage at 9:47 AM on July 16, 2018


I don't follow the relevance of whether X was documented before Y, but if you're referring to that bit about always being within six feet of a spider

Pretty sure it's the bit about always being within six feet of a human being.
posted by atoxyl at 9:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


In all, I tested 309 individual pairs of crows; or in other words, once again I freaked out a lot of Seattle residents wondering why there was a woman with a camera, binoculars, and some dead animals loitering in front of their house for long periods of time.

Superb.
posted by Damienmce at 9:59 AM on July 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


Has it really been so long that we have forgotten the seminal (sic) Dutch paper The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves:Anatidae)?

To quote:

"What still remains is the fact that NMR 9997-
00232 was dead while he was being raped
(one may argue that the copulation was no
rape, but the act was non-consensual anyhow).
Surely, this must have influenced the
duration of the copulation. Necrophilia is
known in the mallard, but only among heterosexual
'pairs': 'Occasionally, males even try to
mate with dead females' (Bagemihl 1999). To
the best of my knowledge, this case is the
first described case of homosexual necrophilia
in the mallard. "
posted by GuyZero at 10:08 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


In the most dramatic examples, a crow would approach the dead crow while alarm calling, copulate with it, be joined in the sexual frenzy by its presumed mate, and then rip it into absolute shreds.
posted by Ansible at 10:11 AM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


The whole issue of the journal is themed around death and seems utterly fascinating.

Chimpanzees and death: "It is argued that, given their cognitive abilities, their experiences of death in conspecifics and other species are likely to equip chimpanzees with an understanding of death as cessation of function and irreversible. Whether they might understand that death is inevitable—including their own death, and biological causes of death is also discussed."
posted by Damienmce at 10:36 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


In the most dramatic examples, a crow would approach the dead crow while alarm calling, copulate with it, be joined in the sexual frenzy by its presumed mate, and then rip it into absolute shreds.

Is the presumed mate that of the dead crow or the living? I don't know why that would make a difference but it somehow does...
posted by epanalepsis at 10:38 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


I doubt that it was the presumed mate of the dead crow, since the researcher was getting her dead crows from a rescue facility, which I would think acquired crows from a wide area. It seems unlikely that she would deploy the dead crow in an area where its mate happened to be. But a crow discovering the body while accompanied by its mate seems probable.
posted by Ansible at 10:52 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


I bet there's one in the room you're in right now

If you are in an urban area, you are rarely more than 15’ from a ghoul.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


But a crow discovering the body while accompanied by its mate seems probable.

I agree - she says she uses taxidermy too. I think I got tripped up on the pronoun "it" but it makes no sense that it would be the dead crow's mate.
posted by epanalepsis at 10:57 AM on July 16, 2018


Actually she discusses the dead crows being unfamiliar in the article, and she was targeting areas with breeding pairs, presumably she means both are alive.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:09 AM on July 16, 2018


My four year old recently started calling crows parrots. No idea why but I love it.
posted by not_the_water at 11:19 AM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Can someone save me from actually having to RTFA and give me the tweet version of why crows would presumably fuck their dead? I don't think I have it in me to actually read that."

That's a thing animals do, apparently. Some of our species does it, other mammals do it, seems like it's a natural thing one way or the other.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:27 AM on July 16, 2018


"Can someone save me from actually having to RTFA and give me the tweet version of why crows would presumably fuck their dead? I don't think I have it in me to actually read that."

They're so horned up that they can't stop themselves.

"what we think happens is that during the breeding season, some birds simply can’t mediate a stimulus (the dead crow) that triggers different behaviors, so instead they respond with all of them. "

They simultaneously try to scare it off, attack it and fuck it.
posted by GuyZero at 11:35 AM on July 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


some weird language in the article that conflates human judgement of human behavior with the behavior that the article's author repeatedly notes as currently unexplained:

"Based on this, we hypothesized that this behavior may arise from: attempts to eat it, attempts to learn from it, or a misuse of an adaptive response (like territoriality, care taking, mate guarding, etc."

"This may be because the crow is less experienced, or more aggressive, or has some neurological issue with suppressing inappropriate responses."

The only way these behaviors can be identified as "inappropriate" or "misuse" is by appeal to the idea of appropriate use, which implies human moral judgement of the behavior in accordance with human moral standards. The author knows a great deal more about crows than I do, but one piece of knowledge that I beleive she and I have in common is that crows do not share human moral standards.
posted by mwhybark at 12:13 PM on July 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


They simultaneously try to scare it off, attack it and fuck it.

So crows have PUAs, too? Poor things.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:19 PM on July 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


When it comes to anthropomorphic animal transgressions, necrophilia is at least a victimless crime. So far, crows beat the hell out of ducks and dolphins in my ethically ranked list of non-human animal behavior as reported by pop science publications.
I must have gone through a dozen dead crows over the course of the study, with some specimens only lasting through a single trial. It was an issue that may have been insurmountable if not for the donations of dead crows by local rehab facilities and the hard work of my long time crow tech turned taxidermist, Joel Williams.
I may not have chosen the most exciting scientific field.
posted by eotvos at 12:50 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


some specimens only lasting through a single trial

Would love to know what scientific criteria are used to decide if a dead crow is good for a couple more romps.
posted by Damienmce at 1:17 PM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


some specimens only lasting through a single trial

Would love to know what scientific criteria are used to decide if a dead crow is good for a couple more romps.


In the most dramatic examples, a crow would approach the dead crow while alarm calling, copulate with it, be joined in the sexual frenzy by its presumed mate, and then rip it into absolute shreds.
posted by annieb at 2:24 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yikes, I have witnessed something very similar myself, just a few weeks ago. My job had me officed in a house in a non-descript neighborhood in north Austin. I took a walk outside to stretch my legs, and as I made my way down the street I caught a glimpse of pale blue fluff under a large tree at the edge of a yard. A dead blue jay. I couldn't see any trauma or wounds, so I can't say what set it pining for the fjords. I guess I paused a little bit to pay some respects by feeling a little sad over end of a beautiful creature. Then I walked down the street a few more blocks before turning around and heading back to work.

As I approached the late blue jay's resting place again I saw at least a couple of grackles perched in the large tree, and looking down at the dead bird.

One of the grackles flew down and landed on the dead jay, and commenced to hump with wings flapping.

I went to get my phone and capture some video, but that seemed to have spooked the grackle. It flew off before I could unlock and start my camera. It was over in seconds.

I went by again later that day - phone at the ready - but witnessed no similar activity. As far as I could tell the corpse was left alone after the first time.
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 3:39 PM on July 16, 2018


Metafilter: Scare it off, attack it, and fuck it.
posted by janey47 at 3:49 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bird fact:
...they don't have hands.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:59 PM on July 16, 2018


I bet there's one in the room you're in right now

I immediately took this as a reference to the paper on necrophiliac mallards that caphector linked to, and started to look nervously around the room for the concealed duck.

Ducks, they really are bastards.
posted by Fuchsoid at 5:05 PM on July 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Putting the "crow" in necrophilia

My four year old recently started calling crows parrots. No idea why but I love it.

Polly wants a croaker.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 5:37 PM on July 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


"misuse" is by appeal to the idea of appropriate use, which implies human moral judgement of the behavior in accordance with human moral standards.

No, it doesn't. "Misuse" here is referring to an adaptive behavior. E.g. territorial behavior is considered adaptive insofar as crows that have it eat better and tend to have more fertile grand-crow hatchlings on average. There is no territorial value in killing something dead, or driving it off. Thus, it is a "misuse" of the adaptive behavior.

We may be wrong, and the behavior may indeed be adaptive with some benefit we have not yet determined, but there's no human morality involved here, just the working hypothesis that these behaviors are known to be adaptive in some contexts, but we don't think they are adaptive in this specific case, or at least any adaptive value is not the same as the adaptive value gained from executing the behavior in the other circumstances. Ethology is always a bit perilous, because to speak of it with proper scientific detachment requires caveats for nearly every clause. Looking back at what I just wrote as an attempt to clarify, it reads terribly! Nobody wants to read that, and so the language we end up using sometimes exposes researchers to these kind of criticisms about human value systems etc., even though there is no real appeal to human values going on in the actual research. This all gets 10 times worse when scientists speak casually to the popular press, but the main point I'm trying to make is that ethologists are drilled from day one to not make the kind of mistake you are talking about, and I don't think these ethologists are doing that.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:17 AM on July 17, 2018 [9 favorites]




so "misuse" is a technical term used to describe observed behavior that does not have a demonstrated or hypothesized adaptive output, is what I believe you are saying. Speaking very definitely as a layman, since this behavior is observed not only in crows but in other birds, wouldn't that argue that it does have an adaptive purpose and output?

Secondarily, you did not address the author's use of the word "inappropriate." Is that also technical language, or is it a casual derivation (and therefore problematic) of the technical term "misuse"?
posted by mwhybark at 3:15 PM on July 17, 2018


wouldn't that argue that it does have an adaptive purpose and output?

I think you acknowledge this above, actually, but you also characterize the term as intended to weight the less-understood behavior as having less adaptive value, or maybe less-understood adaptive value. I'm still not sure I'm grasping your defense. The usage I just described seems to me to carry a moral viewpoint, since it appears to imply hierarchy.
posted by mwhybark at 3:47 PM on July 17, 2018


Hey mwhybark, there's actually a lot going on here, and I'm still not entirely clear on what points you are stuck on, but I'll address a few things that jump out at me, and if you want to discuss later here or via memail I'm happy to.

Speaking very definitely as a layman, since this behavior is observed not only in crows but in other birds, wouldn't that argue that it does have an adaptive purpose and output?

Emphatically no. Not all traits are adaptive traits. Speaking as a professional ecologist, that's one thing I wish more lay people grokked. I am not an ethologist or evolutionary biologist, but this is something that comes into all of those fields. A key notion is the spandrel, a term borrowed from architecture by SJ Gould and R Lewontin. The idea is that, while it's tempting to see a trait and think that it must serve some adaptive purpose, that need NOT be the case! A shape of a part, a chemical reaction pathway, a behavior, etc.: all these thing could simply be by products. They might be maladaptive in many settings, but the adaptive benefit they generate out weighs that in the long run. Or they could be neutral, and persist only because they do no direct harm while facilitating some other (perhaps unseen) benefit.

"Misuse" and "inappropriate" are not being used in a technical sense, they are being used in their normal sense of natural language. That's the hard part I was trying to describe. You could read this as "this behavior is WRONG!", but it's better translated as "here's a behavior that we know has an adaptive benefit in many situations, and here it is being used in a way that seems to confer no benefit, so for shorthand we say that an adaptive behavior is misused, i.e. used in a way that is inconsistent with its known adaptive value". Again, nobody wants to read that, and scientists often are encouraged to speak in less formal natural language when speaking to the press.

Adaptive is the word being used here in a technical sense, it means a behavior that directly contributes to reproductive success (hence my comment about fertile grand crows).

a moral viewpoint, since it appears to imply hierarchy.
This is confusing to me. Hierarchy is simply a classification scheme, a way of attempting to understand the ontology of things, i.e. what they are and how they relate to others.
So when I say an oak tree is a type of angiosperm, and angiosperms are a type of plant, I am invoking a hierarchical taxonomy, but there is no moral element of any sort. It's true, some humans think of hierarchies as implying that the "top" elements are the "best", or the "bottom" elements are somehow of lesser value. But that's just placing human value systems on what is ultimately an abstract mathematical concept.

Finally, let me stress that you may be right. There may be some adaptive value to crow necrophilia. But if there is, none of the highly trained professionals studying the matter seem to know of it yet, or have even guessed it! This is all inside baseball type stuff that you can read about in the journal articles and hear about at conferences, but doesn't really fit into a press release or pop sci coverage. That itself may be problematic, but I don't know if now is the time or place to get into a general indictment of portrayals of science in the media :)
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:39 PM on July 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Thanks, that is clearer. I do feel, then, that my critique of the original language stands, as "misuse" and "inappropriate" in non-technical language very definitely do carry moral freight. I'm still a little confused, though, about whether the terms are being used in a standardized professional manner. Your response above seems to indicate that they are not and that you percieve them as intended colloquially.
posted by mwhybark at 5:16 PM on July 17, 2018


Oh, and one other thing: I do not think the original author intended to express moral judgement. I was noting that the language used does so. I supposed it to be the result of inattentive editing. Now, I think it might be miscommunication stemming from specialized meanings.
posted by mwhybark at 5:21 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hm... what's between "technical jargon" and "natural language"? Seriously if anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears! Because after some thought, I think that middle ground is what's going on here. It's the same core meaning as the word normally has, but without the baggage. It is intended to be read by a certain audience, who has a certain expectation (in this case, an expectation of no human moralizing in research on crow behavior).

I'll note that "misuse" does not appear in the Proc. Roy. Soc. article, but "inappropriate" appears several times.
When I read something like "inappropriate mating [with a dead crow]", I see it as a value-neutral statement. I read it the way I would read "it is inappropriate to attempt to place square pegs into round holes". Or "it is inappropriate to use unleaded gasoline in a diesel engine". I think most of us would easily understand those sentences and not infer moral judgment, but I also understand that in general usage "inappropriate" often has a moral/value content. E.g. "It is _inappropriate_ for teachers to romantically date their current students".

So you have raised a valid point of confusion, and it's interesting to me because of the fact that the best I can say is that it's somewhere between a technical sense and the natural sense. Perhaps a different reviewer would have asked the authors to re-word for broader clarity. All I can say is that when I have written for that journal, my intended audience was A) scientists (and students) in my subfield, B) scientists trained in or working in biology, C) Non-biologist scientists D) the public. Basically in that order, and with the knowledge that C) and D) are reading for a lark.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:16 PM on July 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


for a lark.

I see what you did there! I'd retweet that but I quit Twitter a long time ago.

Thanks for an illuminating and interesting discussion!
posted by mwhybark at 6:38 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


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