Communing With Crows

From a letter to the Editor at the NY Times comes this gem that’s right up my alley:

I’m glad that researchers are documenting the interspecies social skills of crows. Our family lore tells of Klaus, the crow who befriended my great-uncle Jens. Uncle Jens boasted of Klaus’s intelligence, and tolerated his pilferage of small shiny objects. Klaus, in turn, allowed Uncle Jens to climb up to his nest to retrieve needed items like spectacles and Auntie’s thimbles.

I don’t know the extent to which Klaus and Uncle Jens communicated verbally, or if it was in English, Danish or crow, but each recognized a friend in the other.

My own research on interspecies social cognition in dogs has been filled with stories like this.