‘Gorilla Crow’ from Japan is Freaking TF Out of People
By Carl Samson
June 25, 2019
A video from Japan showing a crow resembling a gorilla on all fours has puzzled millions on Twitter over the last few days.
The animal, which has since been dubbed a “gorilla crow,” was filmed at the Parco shopping center in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture last week.
The video, which user @keita_simpson shared on June 20, has since received nearly 10 million views, 250,000 likes and 115,000 comments.
Speaking to Newsweek, @keita_simpson said that he was initially shocked at the sight of the creature, since it looked like a “zombie.”
However, after observing the animal for a minute, he then thought it was actually pretty.
“Thank you for giving me a shock this morning,” @keita_simpson wrote in his post. “Bad for the heart.”
As the video made rounds on the internet, Dr. Kaeli Swift, a researcher of corvids — the family of birds including crows — from the University of Washington, shed some light on the creature’s behavior.
According to Swift, the bird is a large-billed crow, which explains why its face is “a little out of proportion.”
“This bird is not missing its legs and propping itself up with its wings, that would be physically impossible,” Swift continued. “Also, not that it’s relevant to the answer, but a crow without legs couldn’t fly, because it couldn’t generate any lift.”
She added, “Legless crow is a dead crow.”
Swift explained that the bird exhibited a common behavior called “sunning,” which is typically done as a feather care measure.
“When birds sun they drop their wings and cock their tails. At the right angle that could obscure the legs and tail making it look like they’re missing.”
Swift also told Newsweek that the crow in the video may actually be a starving adult.
“If you look at the bird’s chest you can see it’s more V shaped than round, that indicates that it is emaciated. Since malnourished or sick birds will droop their wings like that, that could explain the behavior entirely, especially because its mouth isn’t open or its head cocked to one side, which are part of the typical sunning posture as I indicated in my drawings.”
While Swift has already shared eye-opening information on the video, some have accepted co-existing with “gorilla crows.”
Meanwhile, others created artworks to both joke about and make sense of the sight.
Images (Screenshots) via Twitter / @keita_simpson
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