What is your favorite animal?

I had the thought that making a little get to know thread such as this would be fun, basically this thread will be open for people to say what their favorite animal is and if possible also expand on it by describing the animal and the reasons they like it.

I am a cat person and i adore my cats however the animal with whom i am most fascinated with is the Crow.

To explain why a short but remarkable childhood story is necessary

When i was younger my family used to have quite a few chickens in our land along with some ducks

the problem was that the crows used to steal the little chicks from both, while the chickens could protect at least a few of their chicks even against amazingly clever crow tactics the ducks where useless and lost all of theirs.

One day a young crow got wounded in a fight and fell down near our house.
my dad picked him up and at first was thinking of killing him and hanging his body to scare of the crows but after having the young crow for an entire night decided he could not do it and instead looked after the crow until he could fly back to his parents who where keeping and eye on what was going on.

after my father let the young crow go the crows never again attacked our chicks and even warned us from other attacks by making a lot of noise each time dogs or other animals tried to kill our chickens.

since then i have been fascinated by the crow and while we lived in that area i used to offer them gifts sometimes.
I have a respect for the crow for this reason along with others but beyond their intelligence i see crows as being mentally the creature most similar to humans. Their behavior when it comes to ether creating tools and even sports is balanced by their nasty habits of taking over other nests and driving out other animals from their lands is similar to humanity's own behavior. The crow can adapt to many conditions and beyond that has a all too familiar love for shiny objects.

If i where to point towards the successors of humanity the crow would be my choice.

I also like to issue a warning; I think that any harm done to the crows by our species will lead to grave consequences in our relationship. While crows can identify one human from another and have been known to issue warnings about "bad" humans to other crows if our species in all its self righteousness attempts to "correct" the problems crows have made by limiting their population we may find ourselves one day facing a hostile species with as much or even greater intelligence then our own.

What crime has the crow done that we ourselves have not? If the process of natural selection favors the crow as it did our own species who are we to stop what would happen in a natural world? In the past there where a number of human species but all where made extinct as our own species established dominance. Other species must be protected but i think we should not try to stop the crow... such actions may have unforeseen consequences.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/uX94RYWYA2M/viewtopic.php

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