When a crow dies, other crows hold something that looks like a funeral. Scientists wanted to know why, and what they found says more about intelligence than grief. ＿＿（26）＿＿ It sounds an alarm call -- a specific, urgent signal that draws other crows to the scene. Within minutes, a group gathers. Sometimes just a handful. Sometimes sixty or seventy. They perch on branches and rooftops with a clear line of sight to the body and the surrounding area. For fifteen to twenty minutes, they alternate between silence and loud calling. Then, almost simultaneously, they leave. People have noticed this behavior for centuries. ＿＿（27）＿＿ But it wasn't until Dr. Kaeli Swift, an avian behavioral ecologist at the University of Washington, began designing controlled experiments that we started to understand what was actually happening. Swift spent two years visiting over a hundred crow feeding sites across Washington State. After establishing feeding routines, she sent masked volunteers to stand near the food holding taxidermied crows. Some volunteers held a dead crow. Others stood near a taxidermied red-tailed hawk — a natural crow predator. Some held a dead crow next to the hawk. And some stood empty-handed as a control. The results were striking. Crows reacted most intensely to the combination of a predator holding a dead crow, but responded with alarm to any scenario involving a dead member of their own species. They did not respond the same way to a dead pigeon or sparrow — only to their own kind. More importantly, the crows learned from what they saw. After a single exposure to a masked person holding a dead crow, they avoided feeding in that area for at least three days — even after the body and the person were gone. And when they encountered that same masked person again weeks later, they treated the individual as a predator, scolding and dive-bombing them. ＿＿（28）＿＿ This builds on earlier work by Professor John Marzluff, also at the University of Washington, who demonstrated that crows can remember specific human faces for years. In his most famous experiment, he wore a caveman mask while capturing and tagging crows on campus. More than nine years later, crows still mob anyone wearing that mask — including crows that were not alive during the original captures. ＿＿（29）＿＿