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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."

13 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Can ... by Martin+S. · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... they be trained to deliver parcels?

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

  2. Attack smokers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > "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.

    1. Re:Attack smokers by dohzer · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Attack smokers by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Funny
      --
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    3. Re:Attack smokers by sysrammer · · Score: 3, Funny

      "You could create a pretty effective bird crime network". Maybe, but it would all come crashing down due to a few stool pigeons.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  3. Re:Crows Will Cheat by guruevi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's what I thought too. The crows will eventually learn that small rocks and sticks will trigger the system.

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  4. Re:Crows Will Cheat by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hopefully they learn to take cigarettes from the people actively smoking them, and then go offsite to get more, and teach others crows this behavior, and finally the ash-hole problem will be solved.

    --
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    "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
  5. There's a Youtuber named Aronra by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    who made a good point that there are several animals (Dolphins, Raccoons) that have nearly human level brains but that their limited bodies (no arms/thumbs) means they're probably stuck at a dead end. My first thought was the Uplift series of books.

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  6. Re:WTF? by metalmonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    Not in the discussion.

    I presumed they were the same anonymous Slashdot reader who submitted the story. They could also have been someone who was reading over the editor's shoulder.

    It's equally likely BS, but you haven't discovered a smocking gun.

    Maybe the comment they were referring to was from when the story was originally posted to Slashdot last year.
    https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

  7. Re:It's fun to hate on smokers by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re: Crows Will Cheat by BlacKSacrificE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  9. Re: It's fun to hate on smokers by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    For instance, the number one reason is because you want to.

    Most smokers do not want to smoke, and wish they had never started.

    The number one reason for smoking is addiction.

    Most smokers want to quit, and have tried multiple times

  10. Re: It's fun to hate on smokers by paulpach · · Score: 3

    The number one reason for smoking is addiction.

    Quitting is easy, I have done it many times.