Crows to the Rescue!

"By teaching the crows to exchange butts for food, they can help clean our streets and squares."

"Crows are basically the most intelligent wild animals that we have in Sweden, and probably in Britain, too. They will understand the difference between some trash and a rock or a leaf, which they will not be rewarded for, obviously."

"Crows learn from each other, so once the first birds learn it at our location, the other birds at that location will copy the first ones."

Christian Gunther-Hanssen, behaviour strategist, Corvid Cleaning

"We can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts but we can't teach people not to throw them on the ground."

"That's an interesting thought."

Tomas Thornstrom, waste strategist, Sodertalje municipality, Sweden

A crow sits on a garbage can in this file photo. iStock / Getty Images Plus

 

So much for the superior intelligence of human animals as opposed to that of a highly intelligent bird species. The crows appreciate edible rewards. Human litterers' rewards should be stiff fines. Humans think nothing of littering, spoiling their natural environment, yet we see the profit to be gained in teaching other animals to clean up human trash. Crows reason that a bit of effort and discipline gains them the profit of being fed, while humans are oblivious to their obligation to maintain order and respect and assume responsibility for their actions.

It might seem that the 'lower order' on the intelligence scale is more attuned to the survival imperative than the animals that pride themselves as being gifted with a high degree of intelligence. The introduction of a pilot project in Sodertalje, Sweden this spring seems like a brilliant idea; engaging crows as a municipal work crew; reliable, dependable workers whose wage demands are fundamental and modest.

Crows are to be taught to pick up litter and take it to a device fitted with an image recognition camera, enabling it to reward the crow for each piece of trash, with an edible treat. Gunther-Hansen, the self-styled behaviour strategist, spent months training crows at a recycling centre located in nearby Stockholm to launch his start-up, Corvid Cleaning.

 

There is no need to convince the crows to be involved in a public clean-up scheme. Their natural sense of curiosity attracts them and they 'volunteer' to take part in the process. Evidently a billion cigarette butts are discarded on the streets of Sweden annually, a statistic that the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation has provided, to give an idea of the scale of the problem. 

Each discarded piece of trash comes with a clean-up cost, up to two kronor (about 28 cents) to gather up, by conventional municipal street-cleaning means. The crows' intelligence speaks for itself, with no need for a human to teach and monitor the corvid; they learn through observation and on their own initiative how the collection device operates, a process that takes an estimated two months' familiarity.

The dispenser is programmed to dispense free peanuts in return for an object before the final stage of peanuts in exchange for cigarette butts. The Corvid Cleaning entrepreneur plans to study the impact a diet of peanuts might have on the crows' nutritional needs. With that information in mind, he plans to develop a reward that will not only appeal to the crows, but might represent more healthy natural fare for the birds.

Still from video on FaceBook