The Shaggy Dog Stories - Chap. 10

Chapter 10
The ASPCA Report on Crow Deaths

Field workers with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toward Animals (ASPCA) in Boston reported a large increase in the number of dead crows in the last three months around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus there. Animal lovers across Boston expressed shock and outrage to the school, so the school demonstrated their concern by collecting carcasses for autopsies. Surprisingly, what they found was that none of the birds died of poisoning, and none died from any type of avian flu. Every single one of them died of blunt force trauma.

There were, of course, other animals in the kill zone, but the number of crows was abnormally high by comparison. Being a privately-funded charitable organization with deep pockets, the folks at the ASPCA pursued this further by awarding a grant to a group of ornithological behaviorists to determine the root cause of all the carnage.

Their report was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The report was complex and long winded (in order to disperse potential challenges about the time and effort expended in its preparation), but at its core was a profound observation. It turns out that crows are a social animal and they use the pack strategy to hunt food. They deploy a look-out crow to a tree above the road kill in the street.

By studying the nature of the injuries and the paint left on the carcasses by the impacts, the researchers determined that all of the crows had been killed by trucks. Not a single one had been hit by a car.

The explanation, the report concluded was one of linguistics. The crows didn’t have a warning call for trucks, but whenever they saw a car coming, they yelled, “Caw!”