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Trading Bird Food for Cigarette Butts

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the articles-for-the-birds dept.

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Hackaday is a story on positive reinforcement to train crows to pick up litter:

A Dutch startup wants to teach the crow population to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for bird treats.

The whole Corvidae family of birds is highly intelligent so it shouldn’t be a problem training them that they will get a reward for depositing something the Hominidae family regularly throw on the street where the birds live. This idea is in turn an evolution of the open-source Crow Box.

For some, leveraging the intelligence of animals is more appealing than programming drones which could do the same thing. A vision system mixed with a drone and a manipulator could fulfull[sic] the same function but animals are self-repairing and autonomous without our code. The irony of this project is that, although it's probably fairly easy to train crows to recognize cigarette butts, the implementation hinges on having a vision system that can recognize the butts in order to properly train the crows in the first place.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:44PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:44PM (#579922)

    All you clever programmers and hot shit smokers don't know squat.
    Tobacco is poisonous to birds, see:
      http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/pet-safety-tips/whats-poisonous-to-birds-and-pocket-pets/ [petpoisonhelpline.com]

    Tobacco

    Common exposure for pocket pets and birds occur when curious beaks or paws find cigars or cigarettes left within their reach or dropped on the floor. Even the butts of cigarettes can still contain tobacco and result in poisoning when ingested. Less commonly thought of is the risk of tobacco smoke to birds and pocket pets, which can cause significant respiratory irritation (or potentially even cancer) as well. Ingestion of just a tiny amount of tobacco for birds and pocket pets can result in significant poisoning. Tobacco poisoning can result in the following symptoms: hyperexcitability, agitation, gastrointestinal (GI) upset (e.g., vomiting, diarrhea, or regurgitation), a racing or rapid heart rate, potential seizures and tremors, and potentially even death. Treatment includes decontamination (which may include the administration of activated charcoal to bind the tobacco from the intestinal tract), hospitalization for fluid therapy (which will help hydrate the patient), and careful monitoring.

    Years ago a machinist I knew had a talking mynah bird -- which was found dead one day when he forgot to empty the cigar ashes out of his ash tray (up to then he had emptied it religiously).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:01PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:01PM (#579935)

    Training birds to pick up cigarette butts will result in evolution allowing some individuals to become immune to tobacco and spread their genes far and wide.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:15PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:15PM (#579942)

      Not in your lifetime, buddy. What it will result in is dead birds all over, followed by a big spike in whatever insects (etc) that the birds used to control.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)

        by Kromagv0 (1825) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:57PM (#579967) Homepage

        So you are saying that they should be training pigeons to do the work then.

        --
        T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:56PM (#580008)

          What, you like dead pigeons on the ground next to the smoking areas?

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 11 2017, @12:08AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @12:08AM (#580174) Journal

      Training birds to pick up cigarette butts will result in evolution allowing some individuals to become immune to tobacco and spread their genes far and wide.

      One step further on the evolution path and the birds will start cultivating tobacco and roll themselves ... no, not whole ciggies, they wouldn't be able to light them ... to roll themselves some nice butts.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @09:57PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @09:57PM (#580098)

    This is a good point, and another big reason why this idea should be dropped, and instead my idea from another post here should be adopted: they need to train the birds to shit on litterbugs, and smokers too while we're at it.

    If that isn't feasible for some reason, maybe they could train geese to attack these people.