Weekend-Engagement #303: If you could change yourself into an animal which would it be and why?

When I read this question, I have to be honest, I thought about it for a while. I didn’t want to choose the first animal that came to mind, or my favorite animal, namely the cat, because if I have to imagine becoming an animal, I also have to consider the kind of life that species has, and a cat nowadays, with careless owners, poor-quality food, cars running them over… well, it’s not exactly ideal. Thinking about it, a key point is that I don’t want to turn into something completely passive with no intelligence at all, like an amoeba or some random insect… so, taking intelligence as a given, on the other side there’s the biggest problem: becoming an animal means always being at risk because of humans, directly or indirectly: hunting, pollution, destruction of habitat. So if I have to die at the hands of humans, I might as well annoy them a bit before I go.

The combination of these elements led me to the crow because it is incredibly clever in real life and, if it wants, it can be quite a nuisance. For example, it can watch a person who leaves a sandwich unattended on a bench, wait for them to leave, take the sandwich and hide it, then come back later to retrieve it. It knows how to stick a twig into a crevice to pull out insects or move stones to free hidden food. It can deceive other crows by pretending to eat while actually keeping the food hidden somewhere else. With humans the game is similar: it watches who leaves keys, bottles or bags around, takes what it wants and often just moves things to see the reaction. It can follow you from a distance, wait for the right moment to surprise you, hide objects and come back to get them, all without risking anything.

And you might say, alright, crows are intelligent, are you high? But no! There are scientific studies, such as those on New Caledonian crows that use complex tools to obtain food (Taylor et al., 2008), remember hundreds of hiding spots and plan future actions (Emery & Clayton, 2001), strategically deceive other crows (Bugnyar & Heinrich, 2005), and recognize human faces, remembering those who disturbed them years later (Marzluff et al., 2010). So basically they solve problems, plan, deceive, observe and adapt in concrete and measurable ways.

If I could be a crow, I would be curious, clever, a real pain in the ass if disturbed, and also free, because let’s not forget that a crow can fly, and I think it would be a wonderful experience to try flying with your own body.

Random photos taken this weekend
Post in response to @galenkp Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK303