Ingenious Hawk Uses Crosswalk to Hunt

Wildlife in urban areas have to adapt to human ways, but a hawk in New Jersey has taken things to a whole new level. The Cooper's hawk learned to use a crosswalk to hunt prey, reports Smithsonian. Zoologist Vladimir Dinets noticed the bird in action in West Orange, New Jersey, and documented the feat—repeated over and over—in the journal Frontiers in Ethology.

• The button: The ritual began when a pedestrian pressed the button to cross the street, which set off "a loud rhythmic click" that functioned as an auditory clue for the hawk, perched in a nearby tree, explains the Atlantic.
• The cars: The hawk evidently figured out that cars would begin lining up after the button was pressed—and those vehicles served as excellent camouflage from which to launch an attack on an unsuspecting smaller bird across the street, per Phys.org.

"The observed behavior required having a mental map of the area and understanding the connection between the sound signals and the change in traffic pattern—a remarkable intellectual feat for a young bird that likely had just moved into the city," Dinets writes in the Frontiers journal. "Such level of understanding and use of human traffic patterns by a wild animal has never been reported before." The method of hunting mimics how hawks ambush prey in the wild. (More discoveries stories.)