Eat Some What, Monkey-Boy?

So if you've ever ticked off a crow, it will remember your face for at least five years.

What's more, according to the research reported on in the Discovery article, it will somehow tell other crows about you so that they will also remember you were mean to their feathered friend and dislike you accordingly. Teenage boys everywhere would recognize this kind of behavior as that exhibited by their ex-girlfriend's friends, who have tried and executed sentence upon him based on her testimony. Upon encountering you again, they might caw at you in a scolding manner -- the crows, that is. Teenage girls will simply pretend you don't exist.

Or the crows might call together a mob of their buddies, tellingly referred to as a "murder" of crows, and they will all caw at you together and perhaps dive-bomb you until you walk off. Unless you live in Bodega Bay, California, in which case it's been nice knowing you.

Something about this that's really interesting to me is that we know the average crow brain is not very large -- and I'm in no danger writing this, since crows can memorize faces but they can't read. We also might imagine that to a crow, human beings probably resemble each other as much as crows resemble each other to human beings. But in some way and for some reason, a significant portion of the crow brain is dedicated to photographic recall of the faces of specific members of an entirely different species who have acted in a hostile manner. Talk about meaning it when you get mad.

On the other hand, this data could also be used to prove you don't have to have much of a brain to hold a grudge. That's kind of depressing to a fellow who, on his mother's side, has roots in a Scot clan whose clan motto translates "Never forget."