Tony Austin, a Canadian photographer, captured a unique crow activity known as “anting” by mistake. However, he discovered it after his images went viral throughout the world.
The crow rests on the gravel in the iconic film, and hundreds of ants have taken over its body. Turkeys were the first to exhibit this behavior in the 1830s. That day, Tony was at Victoria’s Swan Lake Nature Reserve when a swarm of crows descended on him.
One of the birds appeared to be having a dusty bath. Her conduct, however, was odd in that she dropped her wings on the gravel and behaved a little wild.
“The crow took a leap into the air before landing on the gravel walkway. His actions struck me as odd. “I believed he was in peril, but none of the other crows looked disturbed, and they all flew and landed in nearby trees after a minute or two,” adds the photographer. Austin knelt and snapped a couple close-up photos. When he got home, he expanded the image on the monitor and found that the crow was covered with ants.
And it was only after he posted images on Facebook that he understood the scope of what he had captured. Scientists discovered that this behavior, known as “anting,” is highly unusual and perplexing.
This habit was originally observed in turkeys in the middle of the nineteenth century. Experts haven’t figured out why the birds act the way they do since then. A commonly accepted notion, according to the National Australian Federation, is that birds employ ants to calm sore skin during seasons of high feather shedding. According to another notion, ants aid in the management of parasites that live in the feathers of birds.
Meanwhile, a professor of wildlife biology, claims that insects can be eaten. Scientists, on the other hand, have yet to reach a conclusive decision.
The photos’ popularity, on the other hand, came as a pleasant surprise to Austin.
“Photography has always been my love and I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember… So it’s fantastic to be able to educate so many people on this little-known and even less-understood habit. I’m also grateful to this crow and his buddies for providing me with a memorable experience,” he remarked.
