Kaeli Swift : What crows teach us about death

 Kaeli Swift·TEDxSalem

What crows teach us about death 

Summary 

This was an interesting story, the study is still continuing, and at last, the speaker tells us that there’s no one simple narrative that can explain the vast array of behaviors we see in crows and many other animals so far. It’s just narratives from scientists or other observers. 

Around 100,000 years ago, the first intentional human burial is thought to have occurred. 

What might people have been thinking when they took the time to dig into the earth, deposit the body, and carefully cover it up again?

Were they trying to protect it from scavenger or stymie the spread of disease?

Were they trying to honor the deceased?

Did they just not want to have to look at a dead body?

What crows teach us about death is that there are new answers that we don’t know yet because even smart crow behavior couldn’t be understood yet. Just we can't fix people’s behavior and it’s dangerous. Probably, you know the behaviors we couldn't understand why we did sometimes, understanding our behavior is difficult.

Words in this story 

scavenger / one who cleans animals that feed on trash or decaying flesh, street cleaner, one who searches through garbage for usable materials. 

deceased / the dead