What crows teach us about death | Kaeli Swift (re-release)
Summary
Host Elise Hu introduces an October playlist featuring five talks on the strange and spooky, beginning with animal behaviorist Kaylee Swift. Swift explores how crows react to their dead, revealing that these gatherings often serve as a way to learn about environmental dangers. Her research shows that crows can associate specific humans and locations with death, while also exhibiting complex, sometimes bizarre behaviors like aggression or sexual arousal during these "wakes."
Topics discussed
October playlist introduction and Halloween theme
Preview of Kaylee Swift's talk on crow funerals
Sponsorship: Capital One and Apple Card
Sponsorship: TikTok and workspace design
Human history of burial and animal thanatology
Hygiene-driven death behaviors in social insects
Variable death rituals in mammals and primates
Crows as a model for studying death rituals
Hypotheses for crow interest in the dead
Experiment: Crows learning danger from dead peers
Observing unusual behaviors: aggression and arousal
Contextualizing non-affiliative death behaviors
Conclusion: Complexity of animal death rituals
Credits and sponsorships
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