The most common animal at Helix is arguably the American Crow. While walking around campus on any given day, you may hear their familiar squawk and spot a few in a tree, on a rooftop or by a trash can. While they may not stand out much, they are important in many ways.
Crows, along with other corvids, are animals whose value in society has, unfortunately, been fiercely disputed. Generally, they are “associated with death, thieves, graveyards, bad luck, and other negative connotations.” In urban spaces, they are looked down upon for “caus[ing] damage to crops and property, strew[ing] trash, and transfer[ing] disease.” This, paired with their spooky appearance, makes them unpopular for many people. However, crows do a lot more good than you may believe.
Firstly, crows are very intelligent and sociable creatures. In fact, “their intelligence [is] considered on par with chimpanzees,” and they have been observed to use tools on many instances – especially to access food. This is very rare in the animal kingdom, and even rarer for a fairly common bird. They are even “known to hold ‘funerals’ and ‘wakes’” to mourn their fallen friends and to warn other crows about potential dangers.
In addition, crows are also essential to our urban ecosystem. With so many vehicles in populated areas, roadkill is bound to happen. Thankfully, crows, along with other scavengers “are fantastically efficient at removing roadkill from cities,” and are so good at this that it is difficult to gauge roadkill counts at all. While this may be a grisly thought, scavengers help us by “remov[ing] a health risk from our cities and sav[ing] us the trouble of cleaning up our own mess.” Without them, our roads would not be as safe for us or for small animals.
Along with all this, crows have existed far longer than many species on earth, including humans. Early corvid fossils date back to “the middle of the Miocene period (23.7 to 4.9 million years ago)”, about 17 million years ago. In comparison, early humans began to appear between six to two million years ago. Even within this timeframe, there is very little overlap. While many people resent crows for their behavior, they were never really given a choice in their rapidly changing environment. Humans do not rule the world.
Whether you love them or hate them, crows have and will always be here. They are intelligent, sociable and essential to our ecosystems. Most importantly, they do not deserve the hate they receive for simply existing in urban spaces. The next time you spot a crow, I urge you to think of these things and see more than just a bad omen.