Animal researcher Marc Bekoff writes the following in his book "The Emotional Lives of Animals" about this scene: "A few years ago my friend Rod and I were riding our bicycles around Boulder, Colorado, when we witnessed a very interesting encounter among five magpies. Magpies are corvids, a very intelligent family of birds. One magpie had obviously been hit by a car and was lying dead on the side of the road. The four other mag- pies were standing around him. One approached the corpse, gently pe