Crows and ravens display what researchers describe as funerary behavior around dead conspecifics, suggesting a capacity for social grief with significant welfare implications.
The existence of grief-like responses in corvids implies social bonds whose disruption causes negative emotional states. This has direct welfare implications for how corvids are housed in captivity — solitary housing may cause profound social deprivation in animals capable of complex attachments. In pest control contexts, killing corvids may leave surviving flock members in distress. Research into corvid grief is expanding our understanding of the emotional lives of birds once considered to lack significant inner experience.