Crows In Japan - Mini Documentary

[@mmmirele]

Thanks for the video. I was looking for a video of Japanese crow calls and came across your video. I've been to Japan twice and the ubiquitous presence of crows sticks in my head as one of the memories of Japan.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

thanks for the comment! Yes the first time I came to Japan and I saw a crow 4x the size of what I was used to. Over the last few years the amount of crows has gone up for sure.

[@GeoffroiRidel]

Great video ! Small nitpeak, the crow you are showing around 0:35 to exemplify tool use is not a Japanese Jungle crow but a New-Caledonian crow. Although Jungle crows can also reach incredible cognitive feats (there's tons of good examples too). NC crows are specifically studied for extremely advanced tool use and research has shown a much higher encephalization in them than in most other corvids. I would say it' would probably be fairer to not jumble different species under the quality of another. Regardless it's fair to say when it comes to crows, the entire Corvus genus is various shade of incredibly smart. Your conclusion hits hard because it is unfortunately probably true. Their intelligence is precisely what might bring them grief.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Thanks for the praise! I know the crow is not actually a Jungle Crow, but it was hard to find any other videos of crows using tools. Since all the other footage was made by myself, actually finding a real life example was really hard. The ones near me have become very complacent because of the steady available food so there isn't a need for them to get smart, well besides digging into trash which they still do.

[@KnightsDisillusion]

A very relaxing documentary.

[@akkaines]

Really enjoyed this mini doc!

[@thingsforotaku8082]

thank you!

[@Borzogo]

Very well made video. Great narration too.

[@defkey123]

How does this only have 350 views? The 4K is much appreciated :)

[@thingsforotaku8082]

I don't think many people are that interested in crows in Japan haha. Glad you liked it!

[@AnukTheWolf]

What an amazing and beautifully made documentary! Thank you! I've been interested in both crows/birds and Japan in general and it's both fascinating and unfortunate to see how the situation panned out in the last few decades. While not living in Japan myself, you seem to have portrayed an unbiased view on things, about both their biology, nature and behavior and the problems that come along with living alongside such a large population of these birds.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Thanks! The population increased a little again this year, although I managed to train the crows to leave as soon as the see my blinds move. I use a laser to chase them away, and it helped quite a bit as they are avoiding the direct area around the house.

[@gavinlew8273]

Excellent narration. Wish this channel had more views!

[@Ryder37-y2v]

Corvus macrorhynchos is distributed in Asia, including Japan.

[@MountainLWolf]

Japanese crows have a particularly penetrating call compared to mountain ravens of the west. They're in nearly every anime lol.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Yes indeed, ravens are quite cute, these crows you can hear from kilometers away. Some have a more piercing caw than others. There is one that doesn't stop cawing for an hour on end, while some do the occasional one.

[@eldritchangel4058]

Considering crows can recognize specific human faces, adapt to new situations, on top of passing their knowledge to not only other crows, but to the next generation of crows, and they can use tools, a war with crows would be long, and might actually change crow behavior forever.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

I think it would depend on how it's done, maybe using birds of prey to chase them away would work, but it just moves the problem. Preventing new crows by destroying nests is probably the most "humane" way of doing things, but also really labor intensive.

[@liliaaaaaaaa]

@@thingsforotaku8082 I've seen other documentaries about crows in Japan, and I can see where you are coming from, but I also totally disagree. I feed crows in my neighbourhood in the UK. Crows here do not cause any issues for humans whatsoever, because here in the UK, we don't have a trash problem. Here, we put our rubbish in plastic wheelie bins or metal containers. You say that in Japan it's not possible to put rubbish in metal bins due to the size. That's a totally lazy rubbish answer. Get some smaller sturdy plastic bins then. They don't have to be large bins. I'm shocked that the Japanese people are so lazy and use their laziness as an excuse to persecute crows. Crows have a greater brain size in proportion to their body than humans. You can't control them with raptors either, since they attack the raptors. I have buzzards in my area where I live, the crows attack them even though they are bigger, and drive them away. The crows are very defensive of their territory. If you kill the baby crows you won't control the crows, you will just end up with a vendetta of crows against the humans, which is exactly the situation you have now. The best way to deal with crows, is to be their friends, and respect their intelligence, and don't create problems with them, purely due to your own human laziness. Your documentary is great, but it is clear you live in Japan and are repeating the same excuses the authorities are coming out with to defend their own laziness to deal with rubbish properly, and then blaming the crows for just making use of the food the humans left behind. That's the mentality of a 3rd world country, and it really suprised me. The Japanese people and authorities can do so much better than that, dealing with their rubbish properly, and respecting the crows also properly in turn. Thanks for your video all the same, you showed a lot of cute unbiased footage of the crow behaviour. Thanks.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

​@@liliaaaaaaaa Even if you put sturdy plastic bins, they wouldn't be big enough in size to accommodate all the trash-bags. Some weeks it's a lot more than others and we all have a designated place where we have to put our trash-bags for pickup. Near me there is simply no space for bins, and while apartment complexes often have a dedicated metal container, that is less so for the residential family houses. You can't apply western logic to a different country, not everything works the same. There are no sidewalks here to put bins, no space for them at all, it's not a lazy answer but a fact. The nearest place there would even be space for such a system would be 200 meters away, and that would mean everyone here would need to have rubbish bins (which we have no place to store near our house) then have to wheel them over to 1 single place. Good luck getting 80+ year old people to drag a heavy bin around. Another thing is the streets are too small for a truck with a system to empty bins, you can barely fit a normal car through the street here, let alone a wider truck. Feeding crows here would get you into a lot of trouble with the neighbors if not the authorities. It is NOT allowed to feed wildlife, and I wouldn't want to. It's one thing if there are like 5-10 crows maximum, but there there are at least 300-400 now. It causes major issues and noise pollution since they ravage all other food sources (local farms, fruit trees, garbage and wildlife). They are extremely noisy birds, often starting at 4am with their incessant cawing that wakes just about anyone up. You can't be friends with 400 crows, that's just impossible, because you'd end up being hated by all other life in the area. Also these crows are nothing alike the crows in the UK, as said in the video, these are 2-3x the size of the ones in Europe. It's like the difference between a house cat and a cougar. But you yourself are projecting a view on this that is not from someone that has dealt with this issue, so you can't speak of solutions. Even if the trash issue was solved, the problem stands that they are a massive problem everywhere else.

[@northide8785]

​@@liliaaaaaaaa agreed these beautiful animals shouldn't be hunted just because they're omnivores. Crows are so intelligent they should be respected like we do in the UK.

[@Envious6372]

When the crows caw, that meant it was time to go home.

[@Snake-sg7yc]

Very Naruto anime bird sounds

[@Envious6372]

@@Snake-sg7yc I agree

[@doop00]

Good mini documentary, I enjoyed that.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Thank you so much!

[@coopershort3667]

really cool video

[@DavidMartinez-ot4fe]

The crows here in Yokosuka are nuts. I just broke up a fight amongst them. There were about 5 or six attacking a single crow. I had to wait around because otherwise they would continue pecking the lone crow

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Probably some crow from another gang.

[@INga_me]

стоит научить их собрать мусор и выдавать им за это еду )) сортировка мусора )) не нужно их убивать, у них великолепный ум, прекрасные крылья и необыкновенный клюв, которому требуется косточка с кусочком мяса, уникальные птицы, не где больше таких ворон нет

[@anzu755]

I'm ur 31st sub

[@techfusion9006]

nice video.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

Thank you!

[@TheSkunkyMonk]

Crows are amazing man, feed em those scraps instead of putting em in the bin and you'll probably find they give the rest of the local wildlife a break while providing some great entertainment.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

there are probably more than 400 crows here, I doubt there is enough food in the local supermarket to feed all of them. Besides that, they are pests, if it was maybe 10-25 it would be okay, but they dominate everywhere because they have no predator so the breed like crazy. Feeding them would just make the problem worse as they would all gather nearby making tons of noise.

[@TheSkunkyMonk]

@@thingsforotaku8082 Nature is full of noise and you soon get used to it must be pretty disconnected to dislike it so much. They are hardly pests either they are one of the smartest birds out there. If you want to experience real noise though trying living on the coast like my self, gulls make a lot more noise trust me! Soon learn to drown it out though, and comes with living in that area...

[@thingsforotaku8082]

@@TheSkunkyMonk this is a city, not nature. In the park it's fine, but in urban areas it's just plain annoying. you cant drown it out, and it's hell for recording voice if they keep this up. Just because seagulls are annoying as well, doesn't justify the noise pollution.

[@TheSkunkyMonk]

@@thingsforotaku8082 The fact they exist justifies the noise "pollution". anyway I can see we have very different view points on life.

[@jazcena]

@@TheSkunkyMonk lol fr

[@liliaaaaaaaa]

Nice video, but the Japanese government really needs to sort out their act with the garbage and stop blaming the crows.. Crows are intelligent birds, their intelligence won't be their downfall, it will be the opposite, it will be the downfall of humans in Japan that the authorities didn't sort out their own rubbish problem, and instead targeted the crows. Don't mess with crows, nobody else on the planet has a problem with crows, so just leave them alone and respect them and sort out the garbage problem so they don't overbreed from the excess waste food leftovers of human laziness and greed.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

they over breed regardless since any other source of food is there for the taking. they have no natural predator and are smart enough to just take food away from other wildlife here. and of course other places on the planet have crow issues. Just today I heard from someone that their home town in Germany has a problem with them. just because you don't have problems doesn't mean the whole world doesn't. Just a simple Google would show you how many countries and places have issues.

[@luiza3707]

😊👍

[@arleneproksa2673]

Unfortunately, lots of garbage comes from people in the first place. So what is the future for people in Japan? As the Japanese population keeps expanding, more and more crows will have an easy source of food. People are the biggest nuicance in Japan. Getting rid of all the people is something impossible, so trying to control the population seems to be the only way forward. However, with the intellect of crows, and the lackadaisical approach of the government toward controlling the human population growth and their garbage problem, it seems that crows are still thriving. Farmers can use weapons to kill crows in the country, but the human population continues to grow rapidly in the cities. Ruined produce in the field is blamed on crows, with no visual evidence that it was actually crows that ruined it. As well, the destruction of small birds is indirectly blamed on crows, when snakes and squirrels, by far, are the major prey of nesting bird populations, and human population growth is directly causing small bird habitat destruction. As more and more small birds disappear, and human population growth and garbage production allows crows populations to thrive, the Japanese government will be forced to take the problem of human population growth more seriously. Currently, it seems that the troublesome Japanese population is acquiring a worse and worse perspective regarding trying to live peacefully with nature, to the point where such peace has been declared impossible by this extremely biased documentarian. It's sad how such an intelligent bird species went from being admired and revered, to being despised for simply continuing to maintain its life in the presence of the Japanese people. It just might be that their intelligence, lacking in the area of living peacefully with nature, may be the downfall of the Japanese people, in the end. The harshness of this documentarian's biased perspective becomes more apparent when I turn the tables.

[@thingsforotaku8082]

First of all the population in Japan is declining, while cities may expand, the country side is dying out with more and more older people passing away and the younger generation moving to larger cities. And sure people are the main cause of most of this planet's issues regarding nature, and animal problems. Controlling human population growth is not something that is needed in Japan, if anything they need more births so the whole country doesn't lose 20% of it's population over the next years. Using weapons is not really effective against crows, specially in large open areas as they quickly scatter once they have spotted a threat. You'd need to kill dozens of them at once to be able to make a difference. As for ruined fields, I've seen it myself, the small farms nearby are ravaged by crows, and some have resorted to steel cages around them to keep them out. Small birds and pigeons after just eat the seed not the produce itself. While rows tear into anything that's edible. Peace is impossible with species they invade human life, that's just how it works. No-one likes their life being worsened by creatures that aren't supposed to be doing that in the first place. This is not just with crows, but with any animal that does this. See monkeys in some countries for example, they plunder and destroy anything nearby. Living together with them is impossible. In the description I noted that I might be biased, as my daily life is impacted by crows, which is why I made this video in the first place, either by them making lots of noise or ravaging garbage and making a mess out of things. In the same way you are biased against humans.

[@xpozen8994]

The animals are not the problem for this planet, but humans. The fewer humans, the better the balance will be for this world.

[@INga_me]

то же нация порядка - бросили пакеты на дороге и подвергают жизнь птицы опасности и жизнь водителей