But how they feel about it, no one knows,
Yet what about birds' reactions can be said,
Especially, the smartest birds, the crows?
In Seattle's streets, as pedestrians hurried by,
A scientist decided to take action:
By a clever experiment she'd try,
To test a flock of crows' to death reaction.
She accustomed the birds to a special place
Where they came to enjoy their snacks,
And when a helper with a masked face
Displayed a dead crow, the others attacked!
Crows distinguish faces, so they quickly knew
Their enemy, the bearer of their dead,
And they buzzed and mobbed him, midst much ado,
Acting animated, angry and upset.
But if a man in a strange mask appeared,
They got out of his way, and did not fight,
So it wasn't simply that the man they feared,
And they were not motivated by his sight.
When they were presented with a pigeon corpse,
Their reaction was much less violent and frantic,
It was only when their own dead was the source,
That they engaged in their aggressive antics.
The scientists think their angry ways
Were a deliberate signal of alarm,
A warning for other crows to keep away,
And thus avoid all danger and all harm.
It's another instance of the birds' minds,
And how birds communicate with their peers,
The meaning of their chirps and trills, one finds,
More meaningful than it at first appears...