Theme Park Deploys Trained Crows To Collect Litter (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: Six crows trained to pick up cigarette ends and rubbish will be put to work next week at a French historical theme park, according to its president. "The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean" but also to show that "nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment", said Nicolas de Villiers of the Puy du Fou park, in the western Vendee region.... The birds will be encouraged to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a nugget of bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of rubbish.
"There's an easier way to get rid of all the cigarette butts," suggests one anonymous Slashdot reader.

"Just train the crows to attack smokers."

Comments

Can ...

[Martin S.]

... they be trained to deliver parcels?

They can't be any worse than most courier companies.

I wonder

[RandomFactor]

Do these cows need nicotine patches if they aren't deployed for a while?

Attack smokers

[Anonymous Coward]

> "There's an easier way to get rid of all the cigarette butts," suggests one anonymous Slashdot reader.
> "Just train the crows to attack smokers."

Chances are the training they have already given to crows will inadvertently have trained them to target smokers, just give it some time.

Re:Attack smokers

[dohzer]

Or the crows will take up smoking to create more butts.

Crows Will Cheat

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll bring trash from offsite, and wherever they can find it. And they'll hack the food pellet dispenser if they can.

Re: Crows Will Cheat

[BlacKSacrificE]

What complete bullshit.

I am a smoker, and as such I spend a lot of time around fellow smokers. I regularly see people standing a meter from a bin flick their butts into the gutter. I regularly see people flick butts out of their cars despite a good percentage of vehicles on the roads having ashtrays in them. And every time I see it, I tell these dipshits "you realise there is a bin literally right there don't you?", to which at best I get a shrug, and at worst I get told to fuck myself.

My biggest motivator to quit is to not be associated with these assholes. And it's not just a smoker thing. These are the same spanners that will drop rubbish a meter from a bin, throw a bottle out of the car window, spit gum out onto a footpath, and otherwise demonstrate them selves to be completely ignorant of keeping the environment in which they live clean. I have a small screw top jar in my sidebag for situations where there is not a bin, and if I don't have my sidebag, my butt goes back into the pack till next I am near a bin.

How dare you make excuses for such basic behaviour. More bins is not the answer. Teaching people to not act like 5 year olds who think it is everyone else's problem to clean up after them, is.

WTF?

[msauve]

"There's an easier way to get rid of all the cigarette butts," suggests one anonymous Slashdot reader. "Just train the crows to attack smokers."

Not in the discussion. WTF? Is editordavid making up shit out of whole cloth to disguise a personal bias? And, it appears that this "anonymous Slashdot reader" is not only ignorant of French culture, but one of those extremely intolerant Antifa members.

Re:It's fun to hate on smokers

[ChromeAeonuim]

True, but if you just have to smoke in public and can't be bothered to get a cheap, reusable, portable ashtray, and instead choose to conveniently litter, then you are a huge asshole. And no, you don't get to justify it by complaining that there are no ashtrays around; just because society stopped catering to you does not make you the victim.