Nature and Death
As the Crow Dies, the Strange World of Bird Funerals, 4/20/22, by Lida Whelchel, is a science article that caught my attention. It is a pleasant little article, which likely doesn’t go as far as I would take it, discussing animal intelligence, hinting at that animals have more going on than we give them credit for. Birds are seriously smart, some more than others, and so picking on ‘bird brains’ is actually a recognition of ignorance- and begs the question, why aren’t those with bigger brains better endowed in terms of cognition. Bigger isn’t better, or so one of my favorite Broadway songs goes. Dr. Kaeli Swift, interviewed for the article, takes us right up to this idea, do Corvids, a family of birds of which crows and ravens belong grieve? Do animals grieve?
In a TedTalk, found below, from 2020, Swift brings in other animals, even insects. It’s true, we have seen nature respond to death, even insects. Her language suggests it to be hygienic response. That is a reasonable pathway for understanding the need to police the remains of our fellow species. If ants removed dead bodies, consume dead bodies, and or have a special pit chamber that dead bodies are thrown into, well- that’s just hive behavior, right? There are stories of damn building were men fell to the concrete being poured below, surviving the fall, but being buried alive by the…
