Crows recognize Cheney, says scientist. They aren't scared.

Ever since Alfred Hitchcock's film excursion into ornithology, birds have been cast as innocent-looking creatures that can scare the daylights out of humans.

Along comes an attempt to scare birds--by looking like Dick Cheney. Except it didn't work. Turned out the birds were too smart for that cheap trick.

John Marzluff, an ecosystems scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, wanted to try an experiment, to test the intellect of crows. So he and his students, when trapping the birds, wore scary Halloween masks of cavemen. When not trapping, they showed the crows masks of humans, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Discover Magazine, the crows "scolded" anyone wearing the caveman masks, and made much less noise for Cheney.

-- Johanna Neuman and James Gerstenzang

Photo of starlings in Antioch, Calif.: Lance Iversen / Associated Press

Comments

[DurtyHarry]

What a waste of space.

[Kevin]

Yeah. Research is dumb.