One study asked crows and children to get a treat out of a tall, narrow tube filled with water. They are capable of using tools, playing tricks, and learning new skills. Crows are incredibly smart, social birds. It isn’t hard to see how someone thought a “murder of crows” would be appropriate.īut this reputation is hardly fair, and science is showing us that we’ve massively misjudged this species. There’s also the Irish mythological figure Morrigan (or Morrigu), who is associated with war, death, and doom and appears as a crow. Should the verdict be unfavorable, the parliament will set upon the lone crow.
One folktale tells how crows form a parliament to decide the fate of a member of the flock. Folklore and superstitions further fueled the belief. The all-black feathers probably didn’t help. This association with death led people to believe crows portended disaster. One of Europe’s species is in fact named the carrion crow. Historically, they would often appear on battlefields, in cemeteries, and after disasters to snack on the tasty carrion we humans left lying around. Unfortunately, crows lacked a PR campaign as effective as, well, God.Ĭrows are omnivorous scavengers and will eat just about anything - insects, seeds, fruits, eggs, and small animals. Likewise, the crow received its term of venery based on religion and folklore. It has nothing to do with a dove’s pious peck. A “piteousness of doves,” for example, refers to the fact that the bird holds a special place in Christianity - dove returned to Noah with an olive leaf to signal the receding floodwaters, and God came down as a dove to celebrate Jesus’ baptism. Terms of venery were often based on characteristics people perceived in the animals, not from their intrinsic nature. A European collared dove - groups of doves are referred to as a ‘piteousness’ because of their prevalence in the Old Testament of the Bible.
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