Mo Costandi reports on what could have been:
The idea of using crows to find the world's most wanted man was based on the work of John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington who has been studying crow behaviour for over 20 years. Working with a population of wild American crows on the university campus in Seattle, Marzluff and his colleagues noticed that birds which they had previously captured seemed to be wary of them and were harder to catch.
Marzluff ran some tests, having the crow-catchers all wear the same mask. Months later, the crows would attack anyone in the mask, "scolding them with loud squawks and even mobbing them":
What's more, their memory of the mask was persistent – nearly three years later, they continued to attack anyone who wore it. Marzluff says that he has been scolded by far more birds than had been originally trapped, suggesting that they not only recognized the mask, but had transmitted the information to their offspring and to other birds in the flock.
The Dish 