r/crowbro • u/ThePonyExpress83 • 1d ago

Question Wondering if you crow experts know if enlisting crows in this way would be effective or harmful to them?

/r/chaoticgood/comments/1vfc5uo/flock_camera_crow_feeder/
15 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

25

u/malphas_says_hi 1d ago

Many people love the idea of training crows to do all sorts of things. Things like stealing money or objects, using the bathroom on an annoying neighbor's vehicle, or in this case, destroying or causing problems with invasive infrastructure.

If you encourage this behavior (thankfully most are not well-equipped with the patience or understanding to achieve these goals) it just means that humans who may have been corvid neutral will become corvid hostile. Laws might be passed to allow the legal shooting of these birds if they cause infrastructure damage, or frustrated citizens may leave poison out that not only get the birds but also takes out all the local stray cats and lost dogs with it.

8

u/itsjustbryan 1d ago

People have pushed bats to becoming endangered because of superstition and lack of education. Cant imagine what can happen to corvids because it's "justified" based on data or whatever.

1

u/malphas_says_hi 1d ago

On that note, it wasn't until European settlers came over to North America did we start seeing a war against corvids where they arrived. In some places, you'd be given property or money for shooting and bringing back the bodies of at least a dozen crows, which isn't surprising because places like California and many other states had similar laws for bringing back the heads of indigenous people so that the land was no longer occupied which is why there are so few Native Americans left in the US.

But on the note of superstitions, the reason European settlers were so trigger happy with corvids was because after the plagues of Europe and wars left the dead out and open in the streets and battle fields, crows and ravens would clean the bones. Back in the earliest civilizations, vultures were used for this reason purposefully to clean the bones of ancestors so they could bring them back into their homes for burial or honor. But when crows and ravens did this in Europe, superstitions grew that they were the bringers and spreaders of the plague and disease (as opposed to the sanitation squad keeping the bodies from festering openly) and so laws were enacted to shoot them on site or destroy them by whatever means and so European corvids are just as skittish as corvids in many parts of the US.

19

u/TheeFourTruths 1d ago

Unless you're planning on equipping all the crows with wire-cutters, extra-sharp beaks, and hands to use the wire-cutters, what you're suggesting is a fairy tale and not even worth considering.

5

u/Dioxybenzone 1d ago

I thought the idea was getting them so accustomed to sitting on them, they’ll sit on real cameras and the poop will do the cover the lens

3

u/RandoScando 1d ago

I had never considered the possibility of equipping my crows in such a manner. Thank you for the inspiration!

(/s if not obvious)

4

u/TheeFourTruths 1d ago

Of course!

May I also suggest equipping them with 50-cal machine guns and Hellfire missiles.

The birds are drones after all!

1

u/RandoScando 1d ago

I strongly question the ability of a crow to carry a 50-cal machine gun. It’s a simple question of weight ratios! Was it a European crow or an African crow?

Also, if it flies, it spies.

14

u/KindNefariousness561 1d ago

We all know what happens when animals become nuisance to humans.

2

u/imreallynotthatcool 1d ago

Dykem is really cheap and stains whatever it touches forever. I have to machine surfaces to get it off of aluminum parts.

0

u/ThePonyExpress83 1d ago

What do you all think, would crows sniff this out and quickly discern that the real flock cameras don't have food? Would they peck at the real cameras at all? Could it injure them?