We arrived at Kinohi’s cage, which turned out to be more like a suite,
with an antechamber large enough for several people to stand in and a
back room filled with ropes and other corvid entertainments. Kinohi
hopped over to greet us. He was jet black from head to talon. To me, he
looked a lot like an average American crow, but Durrant pointed out that
he had a much thicker beak and also thicker legs. Kinohi kept his head
tilted forward, as if trying to avoid eye contact. When he saw Durrant, I
wondered, did he have the avian equivalent of dirty thoughts? She offered
him the snacks she’d brought. He gave a raucous caw that sounded eerily
familiar. Crows can mimic human speech, and Durrant translated the caw
as “I know.”
“I know,” Kinohi repeated. “I know.”
KINOHI’S tragicomic sex life provides more evidence—if any more was
needed—of how seriously humans take extinction. Such is the pain the
loss of a single species causes that we’re willing to perform ultrasounds
on rhinos and handjobs on crows. Certainly the commitment of people
like Terri Roth and Barbara Durrant and institutions like the Cincinnati
and the San Diego Zoos could be invoked as reason for optimism. And if