Posted on 02/01/2022 5:43:12 PM PST by WeaslesRippedMyFlesh
Crows are considered to be some of the most intelligent birds around and some will be trained to pick up litter in exchange for food, potentially saving the Nordic country millions in street-cleaning efforts.
A start-up in Sweden has begun recruiting crows in a pilot project to assist in cleaning up the streets of the city of Södertälje in Greater Stockholm.
Crows are among the most intelligent animals in Sweden and can learn to pick things up in exchange for food, something that the local company Corvid Cleaning aims to benefit from. In particular, the birds will be taught to pick up cigarette ends, which have described as the most common kind of litter in Swedish streets.
“By teaching the crows to exchange cigarette ends for food, we can help clean our streets and squares. The birds put the butts in a vending machine which then feeds them. It will simply be a barter”, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, Christian Günther-Hanssen, said in a statement. The bespoke vending machine is made of plywood and has a container for food that is connected to an electric motor that feeds nuts when cigarette butts fall in.
“I train birds with small sticks that look like cigarette ends. The nuts must be served as close to the outlet as possible so that no other bird takes the reward. The next step is to get the crows to do it with real cigarette ends”, Christian Günther-Hanssen explained to the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
By his own admission, he got the idea as a psychology student in the city of Lund when he learned the theory of conditioning, when humans and animals repeat certain behaviours once they get persistent consequences.
The ambition behind the crow-assisted project is to work out a permanent solution that can potentially be applied in the rest of the country. To confirm that the street cleaner job has no consequences for the birds, the start-up plans to measure nicotine levels once in a while.
According to Dagens Nyheter, some one billion cigarette butts are dropped on Sweden’s streets each year. The 70,000-strong city of Södertälje alone spends up to SEK 20 million (close to $2.2 million) on street-cleaning operations each year.
“Every year, Sweden's municipalities spend huge sums on removing debris from streets, squares, bathing areas and other public environments”, Tomas Thernström, waste strategist at Södertälje municipality, said in the press release.
The unorthodox take on cleaning efforts has raised eyebrows on social media.
“Who's running the crows' labour rights?” bewildered netizens asked.
“Can you also train the pigeons to park electric scooters, one might ask?” another joked.
Watch the crows learn to throw a bunch of cigarette butts in a pile on the street from a trash can in order to get more food.
Too bad cigarette butts don’t look like French fries. If they just coated cig butts in powdered cheese, every bird, not just crows, would be out scooping them up.
CORVID-19
I’ve been watching a pair of large ravens for 10 years. They are incredibly intelligent. They seem to be the leaders of all the ravens in the area. I could go on for hours on the things I’ve seen them do.
What a waste.
Now this is what I would train birds for.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHlb6ukdek
As annoying as crows can be at 5:30 AM if you have a bunch near your house, it is hard not to admire them. They are very interesting creatures. My favorite story was related by a hunter:
Every year when he went deer hunting on his property, the crows would silently follow him around, making no noise, waiting until he bagged a deer and removed the gut-pack, after which they would swoop in for the feast. That part didn’t surprise him, he figured they knew a good thing when they saw it.
What he didn’t understand is how they seemed to know the exact day the hunting season would begin. When he would come out of his back door, ready to go, the crows were ready to go as well, sitting everywhere getting ready to follow him.
What the Hell...could crows read signs or calendars??? Then he realized one year, that they figured it out by watching him through his windows. As soon as he started pulling out all of his hunting gear, putting it on his dining room table, waterproofing his boots, cleaning his gun and such, the word got out in the crow world: He’s almost ready to go...be prepared to follow!
That is a great post!
Just a couple of years ago, researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu. A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone’s relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.
However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird’s beaks and claws. By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.
MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.
The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.
The scientific conclusion was that while all the lookout crows in the Boston area could say “Cah”, none could say “Truck.”
But I’d be done seen ‘bout everything, when I see a cigarette butt fly.
Better to train crows to attack people who throw out cigarette butts…
Like that scene in the Blues Brothers, only different.
vintage Japan Steak knife, circa 1980 :)
these were sold under many brand names, Yorkville was one
Much better than Ginsu.
Bkmk
Fable the Raven. This bird is funny and smart.
https://youtu.be/2d3dOam9Hg4
If the people who smoke were intelligent enough to be trained not to throw down cigarette butts the crows could be doing more important task.
I know the birds in my backyard watch me through the kitchen window. Sometimes they perch on the rose bush right outside and peer in.
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