Do Not F%$# with Corvids

Researchers in Australia fitted Magpies with electronic trackers.  

The birds were not amused, and helped each other remove the tracking devices.

Corvids are known to use tools, carry on multi-generational grudges, and now, they are outsmarting scientists.

A group of crows is called a, "Murder," a group ravens is called an, "Unkindness," or a, "Conspiracy," and a group of Magpies is called a, "Parliament," a, "Tribe," or a, "Mischief."

Whatever you call them, they are smart, highly social, and vindictive.  

Stay on their good side:

The Australian magpie is one of the cleverest birds on earth. It has a beautiful song of extraordinary complexity. It can recognize and remember up to 30 different human faces.

How did they determine that it was 30, and not 20 or 40?

But Australians know magpies best for their penchant for mischief. An enduring rite of passage of an Australian childhood is dodging the birds every spring as they swoop down to attack those they view as a threat.

Magpies’ latest mischief has been to outwit the scientists who would study them. Scientists showed in a study published last month in the journal Australian Field Ornithology just how clever magpies really are and, in the process, revealed a highly unusual example in nature of birds helping one another without any apparent tangible benefit to themselves.

In 2019 Dominique Potvin, an animal ecologist at University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, set out to study magpie social behavior. She and her team spent around six months perfecting a harness that would carry miniature tracking devices in a way that was unintrusive for magpies. They believed it would be nearly impossible for magpies to remove the harnesses from their own bodies.

Dr. Potvin and her team attached the tracking devices and the birds flew off, showing no signs of obvious distress. Then everything began to unravel.

“The first tracker was off half an hour after we put it on,” she said. “We were literally packing up our gear and watching it happen.”

In a remarkable act of cooperation, the magpie wearing the tracker remained still while the other magpie worked at the harness with its beak. Within 20 minutes, the helping magpie had found the only weak point — a single clasp, barely a millimeter long — and snipped it with its beak. Dr. Potvin and her team later saw different magpies removing harnesses from two other birds outfitted with them.

The scientists took six months to reach this point. Within three days, the magpies had removed all five devices.

Coordinate sophisticated altruistic behavior, which is very rare nature.

Don't grieve for the researchers though, they ended up publishing an article about Magpies helping each other escape from the trackers.