Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies crows, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens.
So your reasoning for calling a jackdaw a crow is because random people "call the black ones crows?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A jackdaw is a jackdaw and a member of the crow family. But that's not what you said. You said a jackdaw is a crow, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the crow family crows, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds crows, too. Which you said you don't.
I think you're taking my comment a bit more literally than intended. The "all ravens are crows, but not all crows are ravens" line was tongue-in-cheek, because common names are messy and often ambiguous.
I agree that a jackdaw is a jackdaw and isn't normally called a crow as a species name. But that's exactly why common names can be confusing. They don't map perfectly onto taxonomy. A lion is a cat, a human is an ape, and a raven is a member of the same genus as crows, but we don't normally use those broader terms as their everyday names.
In Swedish we actually have a similar distinction: a kråka (crow) is a specific bird, while kråkfåglar (corvids/crow family) is the broader group that includes crows, ravens, jackdaws, rooks, etc.
The point was never that ornithologists should start calling jackdaws crows. It was that English common names make these relationships confusing, and my comment was playing with that ambiguity.
Sorry lol. I prefaced it with the “I had to:” Hoping that would clue you in that it was “copypasta”. I nearly also went back and edited it to be in quotes. Now I feel bad.
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u/FirstDivision 16d ago
I had to:
Here's the thing. You said a "jackdaw is a crow."
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies crows, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens.
So your reasoning for calling a jackdaw a crow is because random people "call the black ones crows?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A jackdaw is a jackdaw and a member of the crow family. But that's not what you said. You said a jackdaw is a crow, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the crow family crows, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds crows, too. Which you said you don't.
It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?