Can crows recognize each other by the sound of their cawing?
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2davidc8 (
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August 24th, 2012
You know how can recognize someone that you know just by the sound of their voice?
Well, there is a jogging path near where I live that goes through some tall trees. Usually at dusk, lots of crows like to gather there and they’re extremely noisy with their cawing. This got me to wondering if they can tell their friends apart among all that noise.
A silly question, yes, but I am wondering if any ornithologists, bird lovers, or bird watchers out there might care to share what they know about this.
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11 Answers
Just a guess, based upon my knowledge that crows and ravens are very social animals. Yes, I would think so.
The simple answer is yes. Here are the findings from one study:
Previous research on individual differences in the acoustic structure of vocalizations and vocal recognition has largely focused on the contexts of parent-offspring interactions, territory defense, sexual interactions, and group cohesion. In contrast, few studies have examined individual differences in the acoustic structure of mobbing and alarm calls. The purpose of this study was to explore individual differences in the acoustic structure of the inflected alarm caw of the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos). The alarm caws of 15 wild, marked individuals were recorded and 25 acoustic measurements were made automatically using customized software. A stepwise discriminant function analysis showed that 20 of the 25 variables were important in discriminating among individuals, with 65% classification success. We used factor analysis to reduce the large number of variables to a set of seven meaningful call features. All of these features differed among individuals, suggesting that American Crows have the potential to discriminate among individual birds on the basis of call structure alone. Five of the features differed between the sexes, with call frequency being the most significant. One clearly subordinate male clustered with the females, raising the possibility that social status partially determines the sex-based differences. Encoding of individual identity in alarm contexts may be adaptive if receiver vigilance and approach urgency depend on the status, reliability, or family membership of the alarm signaler. Source http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1650/0010-5422(2006)108%5B518:TIACOT%5D2.0.CO%3B2
Yes, they do. And in particular crow vocalization is good over significant distances. That is how we get the concept of
Long Distance Caws.
I heard and watched a big crow cawing, heard a response from elsewhere in the areaasnd the first responding. This went on for some time. I’ve no idea what the discussion was about, but the communication was obvious.
A friend has told me that crows are among the smartest animals so I would imagine yes.
Of course, to us all crows sound alike.
My wife says that when they roost in the trees at dusk and make all that racket, they’re sharing with each other where all the good sources of food are. lol
Thanks, everybody, for your responses!
I just saw a documentary on Nature called “A Murder of Crows.” It was one hour all about crows and it says at the end “watch this and other Nature episodes online” so I guess you can watch it online. It said that although crows do not have the largest brains of all birds (parrots do), they are at the top of the bird hierarchy for intelligence in each continent, and each continent has a type of crow. They said crows have 250 different vocalizations, a different one for cat, human, hawk. They also each have two dialects, one for loud, “public” communicating and one for quiet, family communicating.
When a crow is killed, the other crows will gather silently nearby and seemingly have a vigil, and then fly away. They said that to see it, it’s been described as eerie.
They showed experiments that were done that showed how crows use tools, and have multi-step thought processes, using one tool to get another tool, to get food. That tool usage is more complex than eliphants or chimps, the only other two animals that use tools.
They showed other experiments proving how crows teach their offspring about danger and who specifically is dangerous.
I recommend everyone watch this documentary as it was excellent.
Yes. they can also recognize the voices of people they like and dislike if they interact with them, and learn to avoid or approach certain people or even other animals… Crows are very intelligent and interesting birds!
Only if they are at a great distance. Those are known as long distance caws.
If they are too close, there is a cacophany of sound and they cannot discern one from another,
What are the rates for long distance caws?
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