Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food (opens in new tab)

Would you also object to training the mice that infest our houses to also engage in activities we consider useful? Perhaps say, training them to do their business outside?

I mean, to describe the animals, like crows or racoons, which live in cities and consume human detritus, as "wild" seems like somethings of a misstatement - I'm not sure what the best term would be but "feral", "parasitic" or "coadapted" are seem equally good. Training animals in an environment that's otherwise untouched by humans seems bad for the "naturalness" of said environment but situation seems no more invasive than spaying feral cats.

Indeed, if anyone is worried about the human domination of nature, they can take comfort that schemes like this should further raise the intelligence of crows to the point they'll have a shot at overthrowing the unjust reign of we naked apes.

Isn't this more like teaching the crows commerce? If we controlled their food 100% and did not give it to them unless they did the work, I agree that would be slavery. This is just paying for a service.

I feel like there would be bigger ethical problems over the proper amount to "pay" them than whether or not the act of paying them for a service is ethical

I think your moral sentiments are misplaced. While it would be nice if people didn't litter, training animals to do something beneficial for us is not immoral as such, and especially not if no cruelty is involved. It certainly isn't slavery as slavery presumes rights, something animals do not have. To have an argument, you'd have to show that any negative effects of training surpass the positive. Even if it led to a decline in crow numbers for whatever reason, this isn't necessarily worse. The net positive could outweigh the net negative. For instance, crows are classified as a pest species in some areas and so a reduction in their numbers could be welcomed as a positive result.

What is worth focusing on in this domain is the unprecedented cruelty inflicted on animals in our times where, e.g., cosmetics, fashion and agriculture are concerned.

The crows aren't punished for not exhibiting this behavior. Positive reinforcement training is distinctively different than negative reinforcement training. Slavery is the latter

You're implicitly claiming that crows have second order desires (what you "want to want", as opposed to first order desires, "what you want"). If crows don't have second order desires then this doesn't matter to them, it's just another way of getting food. They're not bothered by whatever it is that's the problem with cigarette butt food, they're incapable of being bothered by that: they want to food so they want to pick up cigarette butts, and they have no capacity to reflect on whether they want to want to pick up cigarette butts, so they're not bothered.

If crows do have second order desires, then it's possible they might be bothered, and then you have an ethics problem. And we actually have more reason to think crows might have second order desires than we do for other animals: crows recognize themselves in mirrors, which requires an awareness of self, therefore they have an awareness of self. An awareness of self is necessary for having second order desires. It's not enough to conclude that they have second order desires, but it's a shred of evidence. However, we usually consider young children to not have second order desires, so I'm fairly skeptical of the idea that crows have them.

It's not clear that there's any ethical violation even if crows do have second order desires, but if they don't, there's no ethical question at all.

Edit: no ethical violation where the crows are the victims in the sense that we're discussing.

>I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for our own survival.

I don't understand why the treatment of other domesticated animals by our ancestors is the metric instead of the treatment of other domesticated animals today. Look at how our treatment of these crows compares to that of cows or chickens on any farm. Can you honestly say that training crows in the wild is the instance where we're crossing some ethical line?

I think crows (and grackles, and other urban birds) have already changed their behavior in lots of equally big ways, to take advantage of where we leave food scraps, etc. The only difference in this case is there's some planning. If we don't plan it, it's not like they retain their natural behavior. Urban raccoons, possums, grackles, crows, etc. do lots of things on a daily basis they would never do if not in a city.

I have mixed feelings about dogs. On the one hand, their faithfulness and loyalty is proverbial - better than human. On the other hand, we bred that subservience into them, selecting for willing, loving slaves.

Like Douglas Adams' vegan cow, bred to want to be eaten.

So I am on first name terms with about 100 crows and jackdaws. What if I have the chat with them and tell them that from now on they have zero hours contracts employed picking up cigarette butts. So rather than hang around in the trees by the river waiting for some small child to turn up with bread, I will be expecting them to be diligently going along paths and through lawns picking up cigarette butts and then getting paid in posh bird friendly food for that. I can't see this going down well with the birds I know.

Do not feed wild animals is something I know and generally believe in and honour. However I feed the ducks, crows, pigeons, seagulls, geese and others that have decided against doing fabulous things such as emigrating and have decided to exist living on bread donated to them by small children. I also take others with me to feed the ducks, as if I really need the 'help'.

In fairness I do give them reasonably fresh homemade bread that is not empty calories or I give them goodies from the work fridge that need clearing out. I was horrified to see a lady giving the ducks mouldy bread recently, luckily they knew it to not be food.

I go for the airborne catches of food. So that means seagulls, jackdaws and crows. The crows know where they have to be for me to throw something to them and for them to catch. The same with the seagulls. There is some need to concentrate and pay attention, correctly sized pieces have to be thrown quite accurately and on time, with the seagulls they have to do a big 50m radius turn in the air to come in again if they didn't get lucky the first time. The mid air hover is most impressive as abilities go.

Despite knowing that feeding wild animals is always wrong and that bread poisons the water and has no nutritional value, I do take great pleasure in feeding the birds. For those few minutes I am not thinking of this problem or that problem, I am just in 'the zone' feeding those clever birds, as is whomever I have brought along to help. There is an art to it! But still, ethical? No, golden rule has been broken.

So why break the golden rule? Well, these birds have already decided not to do things like emigrate, the river doesn't have the insect and other life it would have and much else is wrong. So I look into their cute eyes and go along with 21st century realities, humans feed birds, okay?!?

What motivates others to feed the ducks interests me. The best answer yet provided is that 'birds are god's messengers' and that by feeding them that one can get 'a word in'.

>and the human responsible should be the asshole who picks it up.

You're suggesting a solution to a problem which is impossible. Crows may be a solution to the problem. Convincing all assholes to pick up their cigarettes is not a realistic solution.

Also, wouldn't the crows end up suffering from nicotine/tar poisoning on the long run?

The idea that there is a black/white side of convenience vs. survival is not reasonable. It is very much a gradient, and I’m afraid that there’s much more nuance to it.

For instance, if I have a dog trained to fetch my fowl from a lake after shooting it, is that convenience or survival? Does it not depend on the circumstance? In the deep cold of winter it may spare me from a swift death, for the very same hunter in the summer it may save me from spending 30 minutes fetching it so that I can spend that 30 minutes making camp or playing cards.

This trade off runs the entire gamut, all the way from extreme survival to extreme convenience, and who are you to say what is right or wrong? Further, is there not a point where cirgarette butt collection increases survival for living things? Do you wait for that inflection point before you begin calling this ethical?

The other aspect of this is that the crows could become reliant on this mechanism as a food source and be unable to survive on their own once it is removed from the environment (or runs out of food).

So you are also against agriculture?

It might be unethical, but I'll take unethical civilization over ethical subsistence hunter gathering (remember that even subsistence farming is unethical)

Yeah... the callousness of smokers and their littering is unacceptable. I understand that throwing your cigarette in the trash can be a fire hazard sometimes, but put the cigarette out and throw it out. Some smokers just seem to love flicking that still-burning cigarette into the road like it's no big deal.

Why not also start enforcing littering fines? A $270-$500 ticket should be help to incentivize a behavior change.

Magpies already dive bomb everyone in Australia so they're 50% there

That is so cool! I'd suggest using eagles.

In Southeast Asia thugs have been training monkeys to steal wallets, cellphones and cameras from tourists. We might get some know how from them.

We can even incentivize this by giving more food for bigger butts. ;)

More bonus points if they group up and throw the device over, spilling all the food out.

Or hack the thing and figure out what else activates it.

Birds have already been observed to use cigarette butts for nest building, and no resultant population crash has happened for them.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2138655-birds-use-cigar...

Maybe the food being given to the crows is more beneficial than any of the downsides of the exposure to the butts.

They aren't eating them, they're picking them up and dropping them into a bucket.

Except for pugs. They can barely breath without surgical help from humans. They also frequently lose their eyes due to recurring infections, because their eyes are too big for their eyesockets.

But they are cuuuuuuute :3

> I found this quote unbelievable

4.5 trillion does sound like a lot.

One source said there were 5.8 trillion cigarettes smoked globally in 2014. There's no way most of those get littered.... right?

Consider our cells; they revert to their natural behaviour of reproducing without limit, in the form of cancer, despite 100s of millions of years of evolution.

I was wondering that too. My brief reading of the web page didn't reveal anything, but I might have missed it.

I wonder if humans could bootstrap the process by modeling the behaviour? Crows are supposed to be mega-smart, so maybe they'd pick up on that and emulate us.

Maybe you could start by having a bin of 'butts next to the Crowbar so they can get some early, quick reinforcement, then when they run out they'll move on to harder challenges.

Is there someone here who's done enough video game design that they could comment on how lessons learned from training / reinforcing players in games could be leveraged here?

I think this is where the part "tells other crows about it" line might come in. Perhaps they're hoping it works that way and they just train a few crows? This does seeem like a pretty important training point though.

Didn't it turn out that guy faked his results?

Didn't work so well for alcohol, drugs, or prostitution unfortunately.

But at least I guess it would stop people smoking in public.

A fellow trained his cat to "hunt" whiffle balls around the apartment so it would have a chance to, well, act like a cat for its food. Sort of. It's neat, anyway.

http://benjaminmillam.com/cat-geek/monkey-the-cat-hunts-for-...

Crows have 'learned' to eat toads. They just flip them and eat the stomach.

http://www.odditycentral.com/animals/a-fascinating-story-of-...

Coins seem like they'd very difficult for a bird to handle - they're heavy for their volume and can't be bitten into.

Crows are really smart. If anyone is interested, here's a PBS Nature doc about crows.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJKPwIFzDI

They even transfer knowledge between each other and through generations.