Corvids Collect Trash For Amusement Park

[Silhouette]

So this is very cool. And very easy to train birds to do.
French Theme Park Asks: Crows Can Pick Up Trash, Why Can't You?

This week, the Puy du Fou theme park in western France put some new employees in the field: six trained rooks, members of the crow family, picking up small pieces of paper and cigarette butts in exchange for food.

Right now the birds are under personal supervision of a trainer. But I could envision a "graduation" program where they are eventually liberated from smaller controlled training-parks to a community at large. We could have stations that are fully automated, that the birds are trained to recognize (easily done from the air and with their keen eyesight). The bird flies to a trash receptacle (maybe on a rooftop or other location where humans can't tamper/interfere), deposits trash into a hole. A machine or laser recognizes the deposit and instantly dispenses a small food reward.

Because ravens and crows are so very smart, they could be trained to only focus on roadways, being given no reinforcing reward for picking up trash in what looks like a home with a yard. Otherwise if you set your keys or a pack of smokes on your porch railing, an avid corvid might see that as a meal ticket.

I was driving along the highway yesterday and noticing that the old "keep your highway clean" groups have been slacking seriously. The place for miles was a mess, or at least getting to be. Maybe just train them to patrol highway margins where the trash piles up?

I'm always happy when animals and humans can work together in harmony.

 

[EverCurious]

Raven's are scary smart, them fuckers can remember friendly and unfriendly faces for years, and they teach their kids that shit too.

I suppose we have a "loose" version of this program up here in wild Alaska. Ravens around here pick up random trash and pile it up somewhere else. I suppose I've always thought it was some kind of mate advertising...

Probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen was a raven being hunted by a bald eagle; it was very interesting how agile the raven was compared to the eagle. The eagle caught it, but the raven put up a hella fight - in a full tilt dive. The eagle was able to defy my at the time laymen's understanding of flight to tear open the ravens neck with hardly a hitch in his flight path. Was very cool to see.

 

[Silhouette]

Raven's are scary smart, them fuckers can remember friendly and unfriendly faces for years, and they teach their kids that shit too.

I suppose we have a "loose" version of this program up here in wild Alaska. Ravens around here pick up random trash and pile it up somewhere else. I suppose I've always thought it was some kind of mate advertising...

Probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen was a raven being hunted by a bald eagle; it was very interesting how agile the raven was compared to the eagle. The eagle caught it, but the raven put up a hella fight - in a full tilt dive. The eagle was able to defy my at the time laymen's understanding of flight to tear open the ravens neck with hardly a hitch in his flight path. Was very cool to see.

I have seen several generations of ravens bring up their hatchlings to youth, teaching them all the favorite rummaging sites, ways to deal with hawks and so forth. While we have a plethora of dull-witted hawk-food lumbering about (mourning doves, robins) pecking the ground absentmindedly, the ravens will not let a another bird of prey near the place. I've seen it once. A hawk dared to venture to try to dive-bomb a group of robins plucking for earthworms. Out of the trees zoomed the two adult ravens. They beat the tar out of the hawk as he dropped the robin he had in his talons and took off flapping a furious retreat with both ravens zigzag zooming in on his tail.

They're smart. They'd make great road patrols for trash pickup. They'd demand no workman's comp, no retirement, and no pay other than a few pellets of raven-chow from the trash-machine receptacle.