The raven is an intelligent bird capable of emitting numerous sounds, although its most common way of communicating with its congeners, especially when they are at a certain distance, it is by cawing.
An animal with as many resources as the raven adapts its natural sound depending on what it intends to communicate or express. But, Why do crows squawk? What signals do they send with a squawk?
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The language of ravens
For a few years now, numerous ethological experiments have been carried out with crows which have yielded conclusions that are surprising to some scientists. Taking into account that the raven is a bird capable of solving problems using tools, I think it was logical to expect that its communication is indeed very elaborate.
The tone and the repetitions when squawking indicate if they are dealing with a friend or a threat
It has been shown that crows have an excellent memory with their congeners, whom they recognize after periods of time of even three years. When meeting other ravens, their cawing will be different depending on whether they are family ravens, the group of young adults or if they are rivals.
When detecting the presence of other hostile or unfamiliar birds, ravens emit a short, low caw, which ethologists interpret as an attempt to appear larger and threatening In the presence of crows from the same group or family, the squawks will be frequent and repetitive but not strident, as a friendly greeting.
The squawk of crows also serves to alert their fellows of imminent danger. One of the ways that crows sense danger is when they spot another dead crow. In these circumstances they emit a chain of powerful, even unpleasant, squawks, as an alarm for the rest of the group and, after carrying out a kind of sonorous funeral ritual in common, they move away from the place. Sometimes they take several days to return to the place where they have found a dead crow, because they assume that this area has become dangerous for them.
These behaviors of acting as a sentinel to warn other members of a group or a family clan, or the habit of expressing emotions in the face of the death of a congener are relatively frequent in mammals, but not so much in birds. And, as in the case of mammals, ravens transmit information to their offspring.
The squawks of crows are also adapted to warn of "friendly" presences, such as a group of humans who tend to leave food in the same place. Or they can be used to guide large scavengers to corpses and thus get them to open them, so that ravens can take advantage of the remains left by those scavengers when dismembering the prey.
There are squawks for specific times, such as flight cries, sounds made during a chase, or those made during courtship.
The body language of birds
In addition to the tone and repetitions of the squawk, movements that accompany it should be analyzed or if they use other sounds that they produce with their beak, which they also use to signal. They may even hoard items to attract the attention of other crows.
Be that as it may, the truth is that birds have a complex communication system that human beings have yet to study in depth. If you are interested in birds, don't hesitate to continue browsing our site to find out…
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