Crows can recognize Human Faces

NPR, National Public Radio, recently reported that crows are able to tell humans apart. For some of you, this may come as a complete shock, others may have already heard about it, others yet may have felt that they have known this all along. John M. Marzluff from the University of Washington decided to do an experiment. He noticed that crows seemed to recognize certain people in the more urban area and cawed at them often, but in an area where there were more guns, they stayed there distance. Marzluff wanted to see if crows actually did recognize people, so he tagged some crows around campus while wearing a caveman mask, then asked his students to wear the mask around campus for a while. Whenever crows saw them, they started cawing at the person wearing the caveman mask. Not just the ones that were tagged, but others around campus as well. Just to see whether it was something about the mask itself, Marzluff also decided to have people wear a Dick Cheney mask around. Various humans had reactions to this, but the crows had none. Something that helps add evidence was that sometimes the caveman mask was worn upside down. When this happened, the crows turned upside-down in flight, then started cawing at the caveman mask. Marzluff guesses that crows do this because some humans feed them, while others try and hurt them. Okay, crows can recognize humans and tell themselves apart. We can recognize other humans, but its harder to tell crows apart. I am challenging you to try and tell these crows apart. You will be given a photo of a crow, you can study it as long as you want, then you try and pick it out from 5 other crow photos at a different angle. You will be tested 3 times, so do you think you can do it? Let's see.... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111040421
P.S. By the way, this is a comment someone left about the story. It isn't very meaningful, but it is entertaining :
This just in from WCRO-FM, National Crow Radio…The humans are at it again. This week a couple of their best and brightest reported to Robert Krulwich of National Public Radio, that several studies have determined that we crows do a remarkable job of telling humans apart from one another. Puullleeezzze. They seem completely surprised that as their “white coated" ones invade our nests and attach rather unattractive bling to our young, we mark them as one of our Most Wanted. We then quickly spread that information to our flock and friends through our scream, squawk and dive-bomb system. Granted, sometimes we are a bit over zealous, but, have you seen those bracelets? These same scientists have also found, in less formal research, that we all look alike to them. Big surprise! How do they think that we’ve been able to successfully exist among them for so long? Of course we can tell you apart and no, we’re not telling you our method. For any humans that might be spying on us through this radio broadcast, listen up. We know where you live, where you bank, where you grocery shop and best of all, where you get your car washed. No masks with scary faces worn upside down or even backward are going to fool us. So don’t mess with us. We’ve been here longer than you for good reason. My fellow Crows, keep up the fine work. Continue to identify invaders with shock and caw, and, hope that one day soon, our diplomatic efforts will allow us to co-exist more peacefully.