Finding Two Crow Research Articles

Crows and the Human Gaze

Clucas, B., Marzluff, J.M., Mackovjak, D. and Palmquist, I. (2013), Do American Crows Pay Attention to Human Gaze and Facial Expressions?. Ethology, 119: 296-302

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eth.12064

I came across this article by using Google Scholar. I knew that John Marzluff is a prominent crow researcher who has done plenty of studies, so I looked up "John Marzluff crows" on Google Scholar to look at all of his research on crows. I looked at a number of his studies before coming across this one. I thought that this article had the most interesting content for me, and I was able to understand it well, so I decided to share this one.

This study tested whether American crows will act differently towards humans approaching them with direct gaze versus averted gaze, and humans approaching them with a smiling versus a scowling face. The researchers selected three different sites in Seattle, Washington, where crows lived. After spotting a bird on the ground, an observer would approach it at a steady walking pace, with either direct or averted gaze, then with either a smiling or scowling face, until it flew away. The scientists concluded that birds were more wary and flew away sooner when a human approached them with direct gaze rather than averted. However, the birds did not respond differently to the observers different facial expressions, which may be because human facial expressions are not reliable indicators of human actions towards crows.

This research article could be turned into scicomm article, with a story with the crows as the protagonist. However, it may be hard to make this story interesting enough to make it an engaging article. So although I found this research fascinating, it might be a little hard to create a strong story surrounding it.

Crow Brain Activity When Faced With Death

Kaeli N. Swift, John M. Marzluff, Christopher N. Templeton, Toru Shimizu, Donna J. Cross,

Brain activity underlying American crow processing of encounters with dead conspecifics, Behavioural Brain Research, Volume 385, 2020

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432819311787?via%3Dihub

I found this article using my universities library on Academic Search Complete. Similar to how I found the other article, I searched up another prominent crow researcher Kaeli Swift, along with crows as the sub-search. I saw that John Marzluff was also part of this study, so I decided to read it because I know that his research is always very strong. I already knew that crows hold "funerals", so this article interested me so I could further my knowledge on them.

These scientists researched the affects of seeing another dead crow and hearing alarm calls given in response to a dead crow, in different areas of a crows brain. They did this by capturing seven American crows and imaging them in a cage after exposing them to the stimulus mentioned above. The results of this study showed that in response to the stimuli, the crows showed significant activity not in the amygdala or hippocampus like predicted, but in the NCL, an area associated with higher-order cognitive functions. This tells us that a dead crow will cause the brain of crows to make context dependent decisions about how to respond, possibly explaining why crows display such a variety of responses towards their dead.

In oder to turn this research into a scicomm article, I would set a story with crows as the protagonist. I would describe a scenario where an individual crow discovers a dead one, who then uses alarm calls to bring other crows to the scene. I would then dive deeper into the actual research of what is going on inside their brains when this happens. I believe that this story would help quickly engage the reader into the story, and make them want to learn more about the brains of crows.