By Weijia Ren, Yuxiang Sheng, Yuwen Cheng, Changjian Fu, Haozhong Si, Bangzhi Lu, Gesang Dunzhu, and Zhongqiu Li
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Why would someone choose a crow as a pet? Crows lack the colorful plumage and attractive songs that people commonly value in other pet birds. People also associate crows with bad omens as part of their diverse symbolism in Chinese culture. Nevertheless, online records of crow rearing, acquisition, and trade have increased in China. Wild capture to supply these activities may put pressure on wild crow populations. We therefore wanted to understand the motivations behind these activities and their spatiotemporal patterns.
We examined 21,846 public posts published on Baidu Tieba, a Chinese online discussion forum, between 2012 and 2025. We applied a large language model to identify post validity, followed by manual verification and information extraction, compiling records of 16,243 crows involved in rearing, acquisition, and trade. People more frequently mentioned flight training and companionship as motivations for keeping crows than appearance or vocalization, with posts describing crows flying alongside their keepers and other human-crow interactions. People said they found their crows locally compared to intercity trafficking, and recorded activity was generally higher in economically developed prefectures. Intercity trafficking routes connected prefectures with frequent crow sightings in the wild to southeastern China. The predominance of nestlings and juveniles among individuals with life stage information, together with higher activity during the breeding season, suggests that wild capture may be an important source of crows in online markets.
Our findings suggest that conservation efforts should consider both motivations for keeping crows and the sources of traded birds. Law enforcement could prioritize monitoring in identified local pickup hotspots and key trafficking nodes. Protecting breeding sites and strengthening surveillance during the breeding season could help reduce capture pressure on wild crows. Public education could build on the interest of crow hobbyists in flight training and companionship while emphasizing the potential conservation impacts of wild capture.
