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Crow Behavior

Read this interesting article about crows holding on to grudges for a long time and making it an intergenerational  - much like humans. Though with humans sometimes the source of the grudge is sometimes replaced by the default behavior of one who holds a grudge. If the grudge holder were asked specific reasons why they are resentful, they may no longer be able to recall. And even if they did, they would realize it made no sense anymore. Those events from long ago might have been relevant to who they were as a person back then but time has changed them at the the one they resent so much that it is now illogical and bizarre even. 

Yet that is not how humans always think. For crows seems there is a time limit for grudge-holding  - they can remember people they perceive as threats for as long as 17 years. This long-term memory enables them to react aggressively towards these individuals even after many years have passed since the initial encounter. I have a few folks in my life who have felt resentful at me for much longer than that. My efforts to reset have never worked because as more time passed and more we drifted apart, the last time we actually knew each other had receded to a past so remote that neither of us recalled that time in our lives anymore; there was nothing to return to. Like crows, these folks have socialized their grudges along - frequently to spouses and children who have no baseline of me as a person and all they know is there is an unresolved grudge. They do what is logical for people in such situations to do - they avoid what could potentially be problematic. I am myself guilty of such avoidance behavior - I do not want to confront this person about what they did to make me so upset so my strategy is to completely avoid them.

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