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Counting Crows
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by Mike Toursal
1 min reading time
The Washington State Department of Transportation found over two hundred dead crows on the highway. They were afraid that smoke from the fires had killed them.
Once they’d been examined by a vet, it was shown that they’d been hit by vehicles and the fires were not to blame. In fact, the vet was able to determine, by analyzing paint residue, that 98% of the crows had been killed by motorcycles and just 2% by cars.
This mysterious result led the DoT to call in an ornithological behaviorist to see why motorcycles killed so many more birds.
Dr. Mallory reviewed the evidence and pointed out that, when crows eat roadkill, they always have a lookout crow that warns of danger from oncoming traffic. He concluded his exposition this way: “All the lookout crows can shout Cah, but not one of them could yell Bike.
