Crows not ruffled by Dick Cheney
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Crows can recognize human faces, but will not be intimidated by the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, our friends at the Countdown to Crawford blog write:
Ever since Alfred Hitchcock’s film excursion into ornithology, birds have been cast as innocent-looking creatures that can scare the daylights out of humans. Along comes an attempt to scare birds--by looking like Dick Cheney. Except it didn’t work. Turned out the birds were too smart for that cheap trick. John Marzluff, an ecosystems scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, wanted to try an experiment, to test the intellect of crows. So he and his students, when trapping the birds, wore scary Halloween masks of cavemen. When not trapping, they showed the crows masks of humans, including Vice President Dick Cheney. According to Discover Magazine, the crows ‘scolded’ anyone wearing the caveman masks, and made much less noise for Cheney.
The Cheney mask, according to Discover, was chosen for its ‘neutral’ appearance.
--Tony Barboza