A new research study details how a very clever Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperi) living in urban New Jersey figured out how to leverage crosswalk signals to better hunt its prey. Authors of the study say scientists haven’t observed this use of human traffic patterns among wildlife before.
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“An immature Cooper’s hawk was observed hunting birds near a road intersection using queues of cars waiting for green light as cover,” the study says. “The queues grew sufficiently long only when pedestrian crossing regime was activated at the streetlight. The hawk apparently learned to prepare for attack when sound signals indicated the activation of pedestrian crossing regime.”
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In other words, this bird figured that when a pedestrian activated the pedestrian-crossing signal and walked across the crosswalk, cars waiting at the red light would back up. This gave it sufficient cover to ambush prey across the road. The Cooper’s hawk would fly low through the traffic, and prey animals wouldn’t see it coming.
The researchers call the bird’s ability to connect sound signals with a change in traffic pattern “a remarkable intellectual feat.”
Read the full study on the hawk that uses crosswalk signals to its advantage here.
Header stock image by PierceHSmith/Getty Images
