Ethan Knox

By Ethan Knox

Working among her assortment of animal bones, shelves of science books, diagrams, and papers, Anne Clark’s looks to an unlikely place to learn about humans: communities of crows.

“The interesting thing about crows is that they mirror a lot of primates, including ourselves, in having long life histories,” Clark said. “Age, sex, experience and status will all kind of interact as to what is going on, with whom, in the group. They’re also very cooperative.”

Clark, currently an associate professor in biological sciences at Binghamton University, studies the social behaviors of Corvus brachyrhynchos, also known as American crows. Clark’s research take place in Ithaca, NY, near where she and her family now live.

Although the original study began 30 years ago with a different researcher, for the past 15 years Clark has managed the ever-expanding project along with her graduate students.

Before she came to Binghamton, though, Clark held many positions in her decades-long career.

After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Chicago— with a year-and-a-half stint as a zookeeper in-between— Clark moved on to work at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she studied bush babies during the times of apartheid.

Clark later went on to become an associate specialist at UC Davis, although nepotistic practices prevented many from jobs in such crowded fields. Clark eventually moved on to Michigan State, where she became a research associate at Kellogg Biological Station.

“It is complicated to study, particularly if animals are mobile,” she said. “And I had enough trouble with my bush babies following them through the night, so then I decided to really make it difficult and study crows.”

In the past, Clark has worked with nocturnal primate species and other birds, such as parrots, budgies, and red-winged blackbirds. She says crows and other Corvus species are unique in the sense that they breed cooperatively, adapt quickly— even to urban life— and have long life histories influenced by their personalities and relationships within groups.

Clark and her students cover everything from the patterns of brain lateralization, the impact of West Nile virus, and the ways crows react to humans and other predators near their roosts. Their work has shattered many of the predetermined assumptions made when the study began.

Most background beliefs, including the idea crows maintained something similar to nuclear families, turned out to be wrong, Clark said. Crows actually practice what is called fission-fusion, in which crows form groups, such as family units, and then split apart and form others. This often depends on the social situations in which they encounter— much like humans.

“The parallels between primates and certain bird groups are very strong,” she said. “I’m not thinking that this is bird-ology, per se, or crow-ology. I think they are good representatives of groups which do have evolved, long term, long-life history,” she said.

In fact, humans can learn a lot from these birds, Clark said. The connections they hold to other animals and the ecological processes which run our world are numerous; potentially, they are the basis of comparative work on par with the recreation of the human evolutionary chain. This is one reason why Clark makes it a point to emphasize conservation.

“Things can be common, common, common, in some sense, until suddenly, they’re gone,” she said. “I don’t know how to both communicate that and get people to decide what’s important to study so we can stop it.”

Clark and her graduate students, along with organizing 30 years of research, are now working on collaborating with other scientists around the world to start studies on other species of crows, some who could be critically endangered. Meanwhile, she urges the everyday person to action, to pay attention, and to get involved.

“Having people get involved in doing the kind of down in the dirt, citizen science, appreciating biodiversity—appreciating the complexity of what’s going on in their patch of the woods” she said. “We really need to have a renaissance. The average citizen should feel competent to do something, to help science.”