Dr. Bill [wwh] says
"Crows are diglot" -
"there's an old wives' tale about splitting crow's tongue makes them talk". Here is result of that search:
Voices in the Woods
Filed under: General — Steven B Cherry @ 11:09:21 am
Someone told me a story today about a Native American farmer in Sanilac County who split a crow's tongue and taught it to talk, he named the crow Oscar. As it's told, he'd feed Oscar and Oscar would bring him coins and other shiny objects. That to me, sounded too amazing to be a legend so onto the research.
This bit of satire mentions a study done by Battelle Human Affairs Research Center but I'm not able to find any reference to such a study so this may be a fabrication:
Battelle Human Affairs Research Center, Seattle: Scientific researchers at this institute, which nobody ever heard of before, interviewed 3,321 crows in an effort to determine once and for all how many of them could actually talk. The Crow, genus Corvus brachyrhynos, is widely reputed in mythology and folklore to possess the property of loquacity, though ornithologists in the "know" about such things point out that, at best, this could hardly be anything more than a mimicry of real human speech.
There is a difference of opinion about whether or not splitting their tonges helps them talk. There's been no scientific studies done on the subject as far as I know.
http://seat.defcode.com/index.php/2003/12/12/p106
