The researchers are gathering like ravens,
Intelligent, vocal, beady-eyed, and hungry.
Some of us take our over-imitation seriously
Enough to dress all in black. Some of us
Snap our beaks. So much for the analogical.
Ravens have no impoverished students nor
Any modestly remunerative careers. We do.
When a corvid hoodwinks another corvid
About the location of a cache or fashions
A tool from a twig, the crow is not captive
To the concept. We are. We are the Cultural
Evolution Society, and not just the official
Members of this studious, earnest murder.
When we words say “we” here, we mean
Every damn talking, signaling human being.
Consider what is happening at this hotel.
A large number of animals have coordinated
Themselves to raise an edifice, an education
In the dark arts of all arts. A smaller group
Of animals visit, buzzing with the ideas
That ideas buzz in competition with ideas
And, maybe, serve the flesh that hives them.
Maybe. Maybe not. Human children, one
Researcher from Germany reports, imitate
The most ineffective rituals preferentially
So long as they most resemble real rituals.
Watch the nodding heads of fungal-addled
Ants and wasps. Wait, what was our analogy?
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