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Startup Plans To Clean Up Cigarette Butts Using Crows (popularmechanics.com)
AmiMoJo writes: A startup in the Netherlands is developing the "Crowbar," a bird feeder that takes discarded cigarette butts as payment for dispensing food. A camera recognises cigarette filters and rejects any other objects placed in the Crowbar. The idea isn't entirely original, a gentleman in the US has already built a similar device and trained crows to deposit coins. The hope is that crows will be able to keep cities clean, sort through refuse and perform other tasks for our mutual benefit.
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Let's hope the crows don't pick any bad habits themselves.. who knows, they may end up dying of beak cancer!
To crows smoking marijuana.
Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
Can you train birds NOT to shit on my car? 'Kay, thanks...
"it's okay for me to throw my butts into the street, because a crow will pick it up and get fed. I'm thinking of the crows"
how about robots that pick up smoldering butts and use them to burn the faces of the smokers that throw them. I think this kind of negative reinforcement is a better solution and doesn't involve enslaving animals.
Neat idea, hope it works.
They get seed when they deposit overhead cleavage shots in the wifi bin.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Crows are smart, but I'm not sure about being smartest. I found an injured crow when I was a kid and took it home to nurse it back to health. It eventually got better, but didn't seem to have any interest in being returned to the wild. Whenever I would take it outside it would flop around like it still had a broken wing. It got to the point that it would start flopping around in the house anytime my mom would start bitching about it. She eventually threw it out the third story window, and it tried to fly back in. As soon as I opened the door to the house, it flew back in. It learned to ring the doorbell to get someone to open the door after a couple of days. I think my mom was happy when we moved, in part, to get rid of my pet crow.
I wonder what the unintended consiquences of rewarding a bunch of crows could be? They may start raiding public trash and ashtrays for food.
I love crows, they are smart and intelligent creatures.
They are very systematic and meticulous in their way of foraging.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if they would take on the challenge.
But we have to be careful not spawning a new crow race of evolution,
turning our crow buddies into our flying overlords.
What if several crows wait at large to steal food from the ones that bring the butts.
I've never understood this, perhaps smokers can answer this.
I think almost everybody is raised by their parents to throw garbage in the bin, instead of on the street. So why do smokers discard their cigarettes on the ground?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
It's too bad some humans can't be trained not to litter in the first place.
There was a college experiment several years ago where people put on masks, some of which then messing with the crows. It became clear that they remember faces. https://www.popsci.com/science...
Until the crows get beak cancer and PETA finds out.
You know, maybe, just maybe, we could convince municipalities that it's THEIR job to keep a city clean, by, you know, HIRING people to sweep streets?
Not everything needs to be a magical unicorn tech-incubator 3D printed private space asteroid-mined facebook-enabled startup.
Just saying.
Mostly random stuff.
So how do they get the FIRST crow to use the system? I'm pretty sure from there on others will learn from them, but the first one may be a challenge. Maybe get a tame one and give it a butt to deposit then fly off (repeat until established)?
At least it's not another Kickstarter.
#DeleteChrome
Could crows replace the people who read Google News?
These things are cheeky fuckers and a bit feral and fearless in the cities. They rummage bins in populated car parks right in front of people making a massive mess, because they know there is food there. They don't care about humans/cars/etc there.
Once they learn that cigarette = reward, I reckon they will start trying to steal them right out of smokers mouths/hands etc.
... why should you bother to keep anything less vital to you clean?
If cigarette butts are that big of a problem why not just hire some bylaw enforcement officers to patrol the areas and give out tickets for littering for anyone throwing the butts on the sidewalk/street. After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.
We are a part of nature. It doesn't exist for use to use as raw materials. Until we change this attitude that everything is here for us to exploit then we will continue to seeing nature "fight back".
Since tobacco is poisonous to birds like chocolate is to dogs, this idea is a non starter.
I don't know what it is, but even nice respectable people who smoke don't seem to have any issue pitching their butts out the window when finished, often not even making sure they are out. Not just a few wildfires have been started by this behavior.
Bizarre.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Let's have our minute of hate for those who grew up when smoking was cool and haven't been able to quit, despite a lot of hassle and hate. Then get real. Glad I didn't grow up around the hateful people posting on this (or the week older hackaday thread...and it looks like about the same dumb, intolerant crowd here). I smoked 44 years, then quit. It was EXTREMELY HARD to do. But I managed - and years later, it still tugs on me just about every day. When you've pulled that off, you can talk hateful about people who didn't do as well as you, maybe...but only maybe.
But you jerks grew up when it was already uncool and never got addicted. Proud of yourself for just going with the flow? You got lucky, you weren't smarter or more disciplined. Don't feel so superior just because you had situation luck...
Why not try actually being superior first. It's hard, it's why everyone can't be above average - or won't. Which are you? Most seem like they could, but won't. Lazy.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
There used to be a crow that turned up where I lived at the time who would take the bread thrown out for him and dunk it in a puddle before eating it. Kind of like dunking a doughnut in your coffee. Another time there were a bunch of crows flying around, they looked younger, and one of them did a barrel roll. It was very impressive.
Train crows to peck the eyes out of anyone smoking. If they're already blind then a second set of crows will be trained to peck the eyes out of their dog. Canada geese will be trained for anyone who didn't get the first lesson to rip out their tongues or other vital organs.
Sounds nice, and I'm sure it will work if the cameras work, crows will have no problem doing this job.
How do we deal with an overload of crows and/or fat-as-fuck crows?
...why train them to pick cigarette butts? Why can't you train them to poop on the smokers?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...opens up for organized labor.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
A couple thoughts, as a young (mid-20s) man who has been smoking for almost ten years.
I have to say I didn't realize the hate that some people have for smokers these days. I smoke, both at home in my apartment as well as out in public. A dirty, unhealthy habit? Absolutely, but I thoroughly enjoy it and I make an effort to be courteous, both in public and at home - I purchased a ducted fan for the explicit purpose of exhausting smoke as well as providing much needed air circulation.
When I'm out in public, here's what I do to try and keep others from having to "suffer" from my horrible habit:
a) If I'm around other people, say while waiting for public transit, I'll stand at least 5 metres away and downwind.
b) When walking up the road, if I'm about to pass by someone, I cup the cigarette in my hand until I'm well past them.
c) I dispose of my butts in a designated container where they are available. Otherwise yes, I butt them out on the ground, but make sure they are completely extinguished. I'd be more than happy to dispose of them in the trash, but tossing a potentially still smoldering stick into a regular trash can is a good way to start a fire. No, carrying around some bulky, fireproof container is not a viable solution.
That said at times I've started to lose my urge to be 'courteous', now that having a cigarette out in public is almost a crime worthy of death according to some people. Where I reside, they've already outlawed smoking:
a) Pretty much anywhere indoors except your own residence (fine, mostly, but I think that should be a decision left up to businesses especially bars)
b) Within 4 metres of the entrances to any government/commercial building (still in the realm of reasonable)
c) At any park or beach. This is where I think it's crossing into insanity. If I want to sit on the beach or in an open park and enjoy a cigarette, I should be able to do so, so long as I'm not doing it right in someone's personal space.
Debates come up occasionally where there are who want to prohibit any smoking in public entirely, even if it's while standing next to rush-hour traffic belching out exhaust an order of magnitude more harmful than the toxins emitted from a couple grams of burning tobacco. My short and frank response to that is simply this: if you tell me I can't go for my morning walk up the road and through a near empty park surrounded by trees whilst drinking my coffee and having a puff, I'm likely to tell you to go pound sand.
This level of nonsense is part of the reason I keep an e-cigarette always handy; you can use them just about anywhere which is a big upside on days when the weather is terrible.
The wild crows should catch on fairly quick after watching their brothers profit so easily.
We have a large pack of livestock working dogs on our farm. I taught one to pickup trash for treats. Others observed this and picked up the behavior. One of them figured out how to increase the price by breaking trash up into pieces and getting treats for each piece. Doganomics.
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/0...
It's quite successful.
to simply make the cigarettes out of biodegradable materials ? Dissolves / decays when exposed to sunlight or water for X amount of time.
I'm not a smoker so dunno how plausible it would be, but beats having animals picking up our trash.
I was on vacation once, and there was this crow-like bird outside my vacation cabin. I'd thrown him bits of banana, and he'd gobbled them down.
At some point, he must have gotten full, but he knows there's more banana available. All of a sudden, he regurgitates other food he'd eaten earlier (you could tell it was a different color), and carries on with the banana pieces.
I would double the reward for any unfinished cigarette. It might even become a new problem.
"The freaking bird stole my cigarette!"
There was a time when cigarette filters were considered female/lame.. They found that by adding them, a smoker could smoke a LOT MORE, cause it wouldn't cause nearly as much irritation... As part of the anti-smoking campaign, it should be illegal to sell cigarettes WITH filters, let people know and feel more of what they are putting into their lungs..
Most of the litter on my property is from smokers passing by(people stopping by to give estimate for work, packages, etc ).
... and would we ever know?
Ethics and animal cruelty aside, what a stupid idea. It's right up there with, 'Let's use homeless citizens as wi-fi hotspots!'. Utterly and completely demeaning, narcissistic, and retarded. Young tech is a sad and frequently disgusting thing to behold, and it just gets worse.
Maybe teach the crows to attack the smoker until they pick it up.
Last I heard nicotine is poisonous at certain levels. I wonder how long before the crows die from it. They're relatively small. So, I say a few days. Who/What will be trained to pick up dead crows?
The mental image this paints feels more like something Salvador Dali would paint.
Shouldn't we be building drones with AI that do the job? Shouldn't AI that's going to take all human jobs soon, at least be able to take the job of crows?
The best solution would be a deposit-refund scheme. Legislation worked with aluminum cans.
Not my idea, and I can't find the original, but I like the suggestion of feeding gulls from a car with a ghetto blaster going at full volume.
How many decades or centuries will it take for "Silicon Valley AI" to do this?
Ban plastic in filters. Making them from pure cellulose should be possible and healthier for the smoker.
Who or what are you going to train to clean up the crow crap?
I never understand why cigarrette smokers just throw butts on the ground everywhere, ruining an area's look - it's essentially shitting in your own bed.
Of course if you're smoking, you're probably not the brightest to begin with (I would never hire a smoker, it's a mark of stupidity).
Too bad that won't work for pigeons. I used to take light rail from a station near downtown -- and a grain elevator.
There were pigeons all over, and a lot of pigeon crap -- despite those spiky anti-roosting strips all over the bridge and platform.
Even if only a tiny fraction of 1% of the grain hauled to the grain elevator falls off, that's still enough to keep hundreds of pigeons fed.
I'm surprised some hawks don't take advantage of the easy pickings.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Currently there are people paid to do the work of tidying the streets. For every crow "employed" through payment in form of feed, a community service worker will miss out on a role. Community service could become more akin to helping the aged, but there are qualified people doing these roles. So there is a knock on effect. It's great to train the crows to do something that appears worthwhile, but why not have them do something that humans can't currently do?
Why UNIX?
Well, you can change your Google News edition to something like Czech Republic or Russia.
after the Crows shitting everywhere and on everything including people? WTF
Ban smoking. There is zero excuse to permit smoking to continue. This includes so-called "medical" marijuana. If there is any health benefit than put it in a drug or non-exhaled vaporizer.
What happens when crowd start snatching butts from the hands of people while they were smoking
I brought this up on slashdot several years ago. I also said crows can be used to steal pot from growers. Lazygenes is my username.
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