Experts Say All NJ Residents Should Be Wary Of These Specific Birds

If there's one piece of advice you should listen to this summer, it's this. Please, for the love of GOD, DO NOT feed the seagulls.

Us locals can preach it until we're blue in the face, but there's always one shoobie that thinks it's funny to throw a bunch of chips or pretzel crumbs on the ground, only to have a major public meltdown once the seagulls start to swarm.

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We don't call them the shore's sky rats for nothing, people!

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While the seagulls are the birds that most South Jersey residents (and shoobies with a brain) fear most during the warmer months, maybe we should be focusing our attention on another bird species entirely.

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The scary truth about crows

One of the most well-known urban legends about crows is that they are harbingers of death or bad luck. This belief is often rooted in various cultures and folklore around the world. While that's not likely to be accurate, it is true that crows are actually highly intelligent birds with complex social behaviors.

Some of these behaviors should scare you a little.

A five-year experiment proved that not only can crows remember the faces of someone or something that'd done them wrong, but they communicate that information to other crows.

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Researchers were reportedly able to determine that to be true after conducting studies involving dressing up in caveman masks and trapping, then releasing crows back into the wild. The crows not only remembered to be wary of people dressed as cavemen, but other crows seemed to aware of it, too, and swarmed the "caveman" at later dates.

So, not only can they experience pain and distress, they can hold grudges and communicate them to other crows. Maybe Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds wasn't as off-base as we thought.

Note to ALL New Jersey residents: it's not the seagulls you have to worry about. Be nice to the crows.