The University of Washington Bothell is home to over 10,000
crows according to the universities website.
These crows must share the campus with around 5,000 students who attend
the University year round which has led to many misconceptions being spread among
the students about these mysterious birds that many people know very little
about. A group of 2 other students and
myself have been working on creating an art project to showcase these false
accusations that students have made about the crows by making a drawing of
crows completely made up of quotes that were collected from the student body.
The most common misconception that my group has recorded is
that crows are “scary” and “mischievous” creatures. After doing research on the topic I learned
that what many people see mischievous is actually traits that crows have to
help them survive. The first trait that
comes to mind when I think about this topics is the memory of a crow. Scientific research conducted by University
of Washington professor John Marzluff has shown that crows have the ability to
identify specific humans by their face, and at the same time remember that same
face for an extended period of time.
When people first learn about this trait, many feel that it is scary to
them that a crow can remember who they are, but when you look further into the
topic you can connect that crows use this information to identify who may a
potential threat, which to the crows could be the difference between life and
death.
My group wants to use this project to help vindicate the
crows at the University of Washington Bothell.
Along with the drawing of the crow made up of misconception quotes,
there will also be another crow standing next to it which will be made up from
actual facts about crows to help show the difference between what people
believe is true compared to the actual realities of the crow population. We hope to change the views of as many of the
crow critics who base their opinions on the misconceptions that have been
spread around our campus community as can through this project. Personally I believe it is unfair to the
judge the crow population without first understand why they behave in certain
ways. Crows can identify specific humans
by facial features, but humans for the most part cannot identify individual
crows, so that raises the thought, perhaps crows are more well equipped to
critique a human than we are able to critique a crow.
Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment