'Intelligent' crows to pick up litter at French theme park

https://www.expatica.com/fr/news/country-news/France-tourism-birds-offbeat_2031808.html

by pmoriarty • 8 years ago

121 79 8 years ago

expatica.com

bencollier49• 8 years ago

Reminds me of the fantastic Crowbox (http://www.thecrowbox.com/).

Interested to see how this will work, for how long, and whether it's just PR.

throwawaymath4• 8 years ago

I'm a huge fan of corvids, but evidence that the crowbox works is dubious [1].

Incidentally if you enjoy reading about crows take a look at the author's other posts on that blog. She's a scientist who writes about them (and her work) very frequently.

__________

1. https://corvidresearch.blog/2015/03/12/a-scientists-thoughts...

INTPenis• 8 years ago

In theory it works, I've seen it work. But in practice I'm afraid a theme park will be so full of edible trash that the crows might question the reasoning behind picking non-edible trash up to get a reward.

devoply2• 8 years ago

Give the Brawndo, it's what plants crave. Seriously give them what they like to eat. Make it addictive like we do for fast food. Not only will you have birds that do your bidding, but they'll be nice and fat so you can catch 'em if you need to later.

hliyan• 8 years ago

I'm continually fascinated by how corvids seem to show this level of intelligence without any of the brain structures that we usually associate with it. Can someone point me to a source that explains this?

techer• 8 years ago

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4445165-corvus

Not too scientific I’m afraid but maybe useful.

some_account• 8 years ago

I have magpies outside my window and they are very intelligent and nice creatures. They sit in trees two together, close to each other, enjoying each other's company. I've seen them group together in bigger numbers to fend off cats and I've seen them tease cats in situations where they know the cat can't reach them.

They are known to recognize faces of people and have stunning memory, remembering hundreds of places where they stash their food reserves etc. I think they are awesome.

drakonka• 8 years ago

I think they're awesome too, such interesting creatures! Thanks for sharing your observations.

barking2• 8 years ago

I'm not gone on them, they persecute the local song bird population, we have a plague of them and the even more unwelcome grey crow. The magpie's call is either a horrible squeal or an equally unpleasant chchchchchch sound

taneq2• 8 years ago

Magpies are often assholes. One kid throws a stone at one and they swoop anyone near their nest for generations. Smart? Yeah. Nice? Not so much.

DanielleMolloy• 8 years ago

I don't have an explanation, but I recommend looking into the work of Onur Güntürkün who is doing research on bird brains.

Güntürkün: Cognition without cortex. https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S136...

Press release: http://news.rub.de/english/press-releases/2016-03-03-complex...

His talks are pretty good, there may be higher quality recordings than this one though: https://youtu.be/nHTTVFDjQ1Q

taneq2• 8 years ago

If we could explain this then we could probably explain intelligence in general.

rojobuffalo• 8 years ago

Not specifically a text about corvids, but there are stories and studies about corvids discussed in this book I really enjoyed reading: Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30231743-are-we-smart-en...

st262• 8 years ago

FWIW, I recently read the observation that intelligence seems to be correlated with brain volume relative to body volume, rather than absolute brain volume. Who knows why- but think about the animals we know to be smart. Elephants, whales but not fish, corvids but not warblers, humans, great apes but not monkeys, ...

mmt2• 8 years ago

brain structures that we usually associate with it

That's just human (or, more generally, mammalian) exceptionalism/bias.

As a sibling comment helpfully linked, there's now research showing that avian brains create/house intelligence in different parts, with different structures.

oakwhiz2• 8 years ago

Nothing would seem to stop the crows from throwing rocks into the machine instead of the pieces of garbage that we want them to pick up.

devoply2• 8 years ago

Machine learning to the rescue. Actually do a image analysis on each piece of rubbish deposited. You can use machine learning to induce learning in crows. Just imagine this sort of thing being in every park, it could significantly cut down on litter. Who knows maybe we can get birds to weed our yards for us using these sorts of methods.

oakwhiz2• 8 years ago

I guess you could have a higher "spot price" in peanuts for particular types of litter that recover the most value or cause the most trouble.

OscarCunningham2• 8 years ago

There's a similar story about dolphins who were trained to pick up any litter in their pool and give it to their trainer in return for fish. The dolphins began to hide the trash and tear off pieces so that they could get multiple fish.

kiallmacinnes• 8 years ago

That's pretty impressive! I wonder how long it took them to figure this out :)

csomar• 8 years ago

Would like to read more about that story?

barking2• 8 years ago

Same business model as DeBeers, control the supply of rubbish/diamonds.

tokyodude• 8 years ago

How about just teach people to throw away their own trash? It's amazing they taught the crows but my guess is it will end up with the unintended consequence of encouraging people to just dump their trash whereever even more since "it's the crows' job to clean up"

c3534l• 8 years ago

As awful as this sounds, I think it might be easier to train crows to pick up people's trash than to train people how to throw away their trash. People are apparently not as easily teachable as literal birdbrains.

DuskStar• 8 years ago

More like teaching all the people to deal with their trash with perfect reliability is harder than teaching literal bird brains to pick up the trash that the humans haven't dealt with. If only half the crows get it, that's probably enough. Only half of the humans would be a catastrophe!

Iv2• 8 years ago

Using people to pick up trash and throw them properly is the solution that has been used for centuries. Crows are paid peanuts (literally) for bringing back trash. They are employees.

And I am sure that if you were to offer people a dollar as a reward each time they bring back a trash to a trashcan, the parks would be clean.

In Berlin glass bottles are reused and there is a reward for bringing them back to specific bins. I have seen homeless people looking for trash and filling carts of these.

cm2187• 8 years ago

I don't know. Have we tried giving a tasty nugget of bird food too to every human who uses the bin?

Razengan• 8 years ago

As a reminder, this is what you end up with when everybody litters where they want and nobody picks up the trash:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=trash+in+Indian+cities

hoppelhase• 8 years ago

Well, in Japan, littering is rarely seen.

clarry2• 8 years ago

I'm more concerned that the crows get a little too aggressive about it and try to pick up things from people's hands.

sturmeh• 8 years ago

I feel like they should teach crows to swoop anyone who litters instead.

pacifika• 8 years ago

There are seagulls for that

eloisant2• 8 years ago

That's the Puy du Fou, about an hour drive from where I live: https://www.puydufou.com/en

They already have many birds, and a falconry show so they certainly have the skills to train birds to do what they want.

https://www.puydufou.com/en/lallee-des-volieres

The park is usually pretty clean, not that many people litter anyway so as suspect it's more for the novelty and as a fun project for the falconry staff than to save on cleaning.

rcMgD2BwE72F2• 8 years ago

It's also a very controversial theme park that promotes an extremely religious version of history (cf. in French, the French Wikipedia article https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puy_du_Fou#Controverses - and this blog post about the bizarre revisionism of every attaction https://culturespub.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/le-puy-du-fou-c...).

The owners of the park are also working with ultraorthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev to create similar parks in Russia and Crimea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Malofeev).

He has teamed with a French developer to build two “Tsargrad” theme parks in Crimea that will present a family-friendly recounting of Russian history. He’s also developing Tsargrad TV, a cable network—for now it’s just a YouTube channel—that will provide a conservative Orthodox perspective on the news. “We want to build up [a network based on] Orthodox principles the way Fox News was built,” he says. “We want to show the news in the way that Orthodox people, who are 70 to 80 percent of the population, see it.” (Jack Hanick, a former Fox News employee, will be a producer for the network.) I ask if Russia’s existing TV networks aren’t conservative enough. “Aren’t Orthodox enough,” he counters.
But his goals go beyond making Russia a more religious society. A self-described monarchist, he favors a full return of the Russian Empire, including the restoration of the czar. “Monarchies have been alive in history for thousands of years,” he says. “Republics, just for several centuries, yet we assume that monarchies belong to the past and republics to the future.” He points out that seven of the 10 wealthiest countries in the world are monarchies.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...

Puy du Fou is using some of its revenues to finance religious/royalist French organizations and discreetly supports anti-abortion campaigns (https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2015/07/08/2140471-puy-fou-...).

arnaudsm2• 8 years ago

Accusing the park of revisionism is a bit extreme. It depicts romanized events that are deliberately avoided by French schools, like the Chouannerie.

eloisant2• 8 years ago

Yes, that's true.

Many of the shows glorify Christianism (like the Viking show where the Viking convert to Christianism at the end when they see a Saint rising from a river) or the Roman era arena show where the good guys are Christians persecuted in the arena, shouting to the Romans that their gods are fake (and winning at the end).

Other shows glorify the Vendee region (where the park is), and present King loyalists who fought against the Revolution as heroes (Charette).

Still, the park is beautiful and the shows are very good. I went with my kids and they enjoyed the sword fights and stunts, and didn't understand anything of their bullshit.

richsherwood3• 8 years ago

I read somewhere about training crows to pickup cigarette butts in exchange food. I’ve always wondered if it would be possible to train a crow to pick up loose coins for food. I imagine the actual machine would be fairly easy to build but the most difficult part would be keeping the coin pathway free of non-coins as the crows are likely to pick up bottle caps, key rings and other junk. The other problem would be dealing with your neighbours as there would always be crows hanging around.

Side note: All the crows in Vancouver roost on a single street. Every day around sundown there are 10s of thousands of crows flying east and creating a chaotic scene at times. I’ve seen hundreds of crows ripping up a lawn looking for worms once and it felt like a scene from a movie. Here is a video of all the crows causing ruckus: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_QuEjaG4Ghs

Also we have one crow here in Vancouver who was raised by a human so he is essentially part of the population. He takes the sktrain, walks into McDonald’s and even stole a knife from a crime scene once. It’s an absolute hoot. He even has his own Instagram page: https://instagram.com/canuckthecrow

lewiscollard• 8 years ago

The coin thing could possibly make for a modest business model. But crows are SMART and you might want to consider the incentives you'd be creating by rewarding them for finding money... :)

Shivetya• 8 years ago

So I wonder, if you teach them to pick up coins would they then fish them from some of the fountains known for people throwing them in?

shady-lady• 8 years ago

that instagram a/c is a fake. the real one is https://www.instagram.com/canuck_and_i/

emmelaich• 8 years ago

vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flU0rDDGtHU

8_hours_ago• 8 years ago

a/c == account? I have never seen that one before

richsherwood3• 8 years ago

You're right. I actually searched quite a bit for the account but only this one came up. I knew something was off when it only had 500 followers.

kumarharsh• 8 years ago

I read this a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/20/vancouver-lang...

So... Can't this plan backfire too?

richsherwood3• 8 years ago

Crow attacks generally only happen for a few weeks every spring as the young has left the nest and is still too young to fly. It's a known issue here and not really anything to worry about.

throwawaymath4• 8 years ago

I read somewhere about training crows to pickup cigarette butts in exchange food. I’ve always wondered if it would be possible to train a crow to pick up loose coins for food.

Probably not. It probably seems like I'm shilling this researcher's blog in this thread at this point but this commentary [1] gives a short explanation of why.

One of my hobbies is actually bird watching, particularly with crows. I love the animals, they're very fascinating creatures. I've had the opportunity to interact with many of them because I set out peanuts for them near my neighborhood. They've very gradually become acclimated to this routine, and they reliably arrive to pick up food if I make a particular noise and they're in the area.

But I'm very skeptical that I could "train" them to start exchanging items for food. In captivity a crow's intelligence can be especially fostered and trained because there's no other source of food to distract it. If you want it to proceed through a puzzle [2] to get food it has to do so. But wild crows are very, very cautious and (like most animals) very economically rational in their feeding habits. To date none of the wild crows who give people items have been trained to do so, it's been a happy accident (it's never happened to me, unfortunately). If you start imposing an exchange system on the food dispensary, you might find that the crows simply go elsewhere for easier meals.

_____________

1. I read somewhere about training crows to pickup cigarette butts in exchange food. I’ve always wondered if it would be possible to train a crow to pick up loose coins for food.

2. https://youtu.be/ZerUbHmuY04

st262• 8 years ago

Clearly an economically rational animal can still be influenced to a certain behavior, if you make the reward attractive enough.

It's not like crows are not willing to work for food. They have been documented breaking open stubborn mollusks by repeatedly flying them high above a road and dropping them until they crack, or throwing them under oncoming traffic to be smashed open.

kwhitefoot• 8 years ago

If you start imposing an exchange system on the food dispensary, you might find that the crows simply go elsewhere for easier meals.

Surely that would depend on the exchange rate?

mmt2• 8 years ago

But I'm very skeptical that I could "train" them to start exchanging items for food. In captivity a crow's intelligence can be especially fostered and trained because there's no other source of food to distract it.

What seems not to have been mentioned so far is the difference between the economic rationality of an individual versus what happens when there's a large population of those individuals.

AFAICT, the goal of these projects isn't to train individuals but to train the population, in aggregate, perform the task.

l3robot• 8 years ago

I’ve always wondered if it would be possible to train a crow to pick up loose coins for food.

Yep, this guy did it and it is quite fascinating; TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_o... Website: http://www.josh.is/crow-machine/

And also, this dutch startup is aiming at training crows to pick up cigarettes: https://www.crowdedcities.com/

dghughes• 8 years ago

Same thing here way over on the other coast in the Maritimes. The crows by the hundreds head home in the early evening, it's quite a sight. There is a local play/artsy thing about it too people dress up like crows. http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/local/crows-run-riot-throu...

code_coyote2• 8 years ago

Is there any consideration for the health effects of carrying a carcinogen in their beaks? Cigarette butts are _nasty_ and also poisonous.

collyw• 8 years ago

Your comment sounds a bit hyperbolic.

I guess eating them isn't going to be good, but is picking them up and depositing them going to be poisonous to the crow?

csydas• 8 years ago

I think it's what the above poster was specifically asking. Is this safe for the crows? It's a cute circus trick, but has anyone checked that it's actually safe for them?

tjoff2• 8 years ago

There is a nice ted talk (from 2008, 10min) about crow intelligence and teaching crows how to pick up trash. It has stuck with me ever since I first saw it, highly recommended.

https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_o...

throwawaymath4• 8 years ago

You should read this short commentary [1] from a corvid researcher. There will probably be replication issues with trying to get wild crows to pick up food using his crowbox idea.

____________

1. https://corvidresearch.blog/2015/03/12/a-scientists-thoughts...

tjoff2• 8 years ago

Thanks! That is disheartening, however the spirit of the talk is still inspiring and this HN post reinforces the idea.

The motivational part is after all a bit orthogonal to the intelligence claim. So the answer to the question "could we teach crows to do this?" might instead be "absolutely, however wild crows choose not to participate". Which is quite different depending on which viewpoint you have.

The other anecdotes from that talk are still valid and equally fascinating.

Can't recommend that talk any more though, at least not without preceding it with the information you linked...

curiousgal• 8 years ago

What will keep them from attacking smokers and grabbing their cigarettes for treats?

Digit-Al2• 8 years ago

I guess that would reduce the number of cigarette butts littering the park, if smokers were too terrified to smoke there :-D

peatmoss• 8 years ago

Long term? Probably a reduction in cancer rates among humans, and likely an increase in crow cancers.

snambi• 8 years ago

This is so sad. Now we are "training" the birds to pick up our trash.

deviationblue• 8 years ago

Agreed. And can't we just employ humans to do this? Give them a job and such?

pxtail• 8 years ago

Are you eager to apply for this job?

pjettter• 8 years ago

I thought it said cows, which got me thinking...

aniijbod• 8 years ago

If "litter collecting crows" produces an amusing mental image, just imagine my momentary initial misreading of that healine with "intelligent cows" and somehow it seems to fit the "theme park" idiom far more appropriately.

'Intelligent' crows to pick up litter at French theme park

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