[richsherwood]

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

[l3robot]

> 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/

[throwawaymath]

> 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

[kwhitefoot]

> 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?

[mmt]

> 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.

[st26]

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.

[throwawaymath]

Yeah that's true, and I've seen a number of corvid species (including crows) taking my peanuts and dropping them a few stories. They also like to soak almonds in water to soften them for chewing.

The thing is that there are ample other food sources so whatever you provide needs to be truly exceptional insofar as rewards go. And the crows might not know it's a great reward until they solve the puzzle to get it.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just pessimistic.

[splicer]

I've seen seagulls break mollusks that way too.

[shady-lady]

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

[richsherwood]

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.

[8_hours_ago]

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

[emmelaich]

vid:

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

[lewiscollard]

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... :)

[dghughes]

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...

[kumarharsh]

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

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

[richsherwood]

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.

[Shivetya]

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?