NATURE: A Murder of Crows

• October 17, 2010

Sunday, October 24 at 8 p.m.

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Crows do not have the best of reputations. They are generally dismissed as spooky — Hitchcock used them quite successfully to frighten moviegoers — or as a general nuisance; scarecrows were, after all, invented to scare crows away from crops. But their image is about to take a turn. New research has shown that they are among the most intelligent animals in the world, able to use tools as only elephants and chimpanzees do, able to recognize each other’s voices and 250 distinct calls. They are social, mate for life, and raise their young for as long as five years. They’re able to recognize individual humans and pick them out of a crowd up to two years later. Crow experts from around the world sing their praises and present the viewer with captivating new footage of crows as they’ve never been seen before.