2003 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 161-164
Many soap bars have been carried by jungle crows from a Kindergarten in Chiba, central Japan. We traced the soap bars from the kindergarten by inserting transmitters into the bars, and studied why the crows took the soap and what they did with it. All the bars carried were found within a radius of 110 m of the kindergarten. Most of them were hidden in fallen leaves on the forest floor. Some of the bars were moved again to other sites, and were stored again. All the bars traced showed increasing amounts of damage, suggesting that the crows ate some of the soap each day. Visual observations and video images suggest that only a few crow individuals were involved in this soap carrying and storing. The high number of bars taken suggests that soap has become a favorite food for the crows.
