Theme Park Deploys Trained Crows To Collect Litter (theguardian.com) 181
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."
"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."
Can ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... they be trained to deliver parcels?
They can't be any worse than most courier companies.
Re: Can ... (Score:2)
I can see this going horribly wrong. Crows know cigarettes and rubbish get rewards. This could easily devolve into a an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Do these cows need nicotine patches if they aren't deployed for a while?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Cows?!?! Wow, that is a whole new angle on this story.
French theme park deploys herd of cows to clean up cigarette butts!!!!
Who cleans up after the cows?
Attack smokers (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.
Re:Attack smokers (Score:4, Funny)
This.
Obligatory XKCD. [xkcd.com]
Re:Attack smokers (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the crows will take up smoking to create more butts.
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More accurately the crows will try to game the system by delivering what ever they can that will provide a reward. If you are training them to create savings for the park, wouldn't it be smarter to teach them to pick up money, more money more reward. Then of course they can figure out wallets and purses are full of money. Watch where you put your cigarette packs, crows are smarter than people think and untrained crows will learn to mimic the actions of trained crows and of course seek to improve on it, lik
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You could create a pretty effective bird crime network, by just teaching a few to steal money from wallets and bring them in for rewards. No wallets, jsut notes or jewelry. Eventually other crows would realise the good thing going on and eventually you have half the Corvidae in the city, sneaking in chimneys and carelessly opened doors to snatch anything they can loot to bring in for rewards, all the potentially neat legal defence of "Shit I dont know what was going on, birds just keep giving me stuff so I
Re:Attack smokers (Score:4, Funny)
"You could create a pretty effective bird crime network". Maybe, but it would all come crashing down due to a few stool pigeons.
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Honest question: Does each crow have to be individually trained, or can new crows learn by watching how the already trained crows get free food?
Interesting idea (Score:2)
It could work.
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Yes they are smart, how long before they figure out how to fool the system and submit false cigarette butts or fake false small pieces of rubbish or go get them straight from the factory or the from local trash drop off or from the ashtrays?
In the city where I live, most businesses lock their outdoor ashtrays so the homeless people don't come pick through them. Watch those crows! They will figure out a way to unlock them! Jackpot!
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Jackpot!
Nicely done!
(For those who don't know, a jackpot is called so because of the jackdaw, a member of the crow family, being notorious for stealing shiny things. So a jackpot is a nest full of shinies.)
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You give the crows' intelligence too little credit.
I predict that they will soon learn to crap on all guests that don't have a cigarette in their hand. Smokers will have a more pleasurable experience in the park and thus over time become a larger portion of the visitors.
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10 Groundskeepers regularly empty the "butt collectors" into garbage bags and move them to a dumpster somewhere.
20 The crows then raid that dumpsters, opening all the bags, and taking everything they deposited into the "butt collectors"
30 GOTO 10
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Yes they are smart, how long before they figure out how to fool the system and submit false cigarette butts or fake false small pieces of rubbish
The system already prevents that through image recognition [crowdedcities.com]: After the camera has recognised the cigarette filter as a filter, it returns a bit of food to the table in front of the crow.
Not good (Score:2)
These crows are taking our jobs!!!
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Politicians won't care, because they're cawcasian.
I'll see myself out.
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These crows are taking our jobs!!!
You misspelled "terking" and "jerbs" there
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Or maybe we could instead convince the precious snowflake generation that jobs of any nature is a good thing.
Too late, they weren't raised as Puritans. Jobs of an extractive nature aren't a good thing, they're imminentizing the eschaton.
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Here, arm yourself with some knowledge, for a change: The park is in France.
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Wow, xenophobe much?
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No, they are taking the jobs of the immigrants because, as seems to be common knowledge, is that there are some jobs that Americans simply will not do.
Cleaning French theme parks being one of them.
Um... (Score:2)
"nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment"
How does this follow when humans are training the crows to clean up the human mess?
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/pedantic: Last time I checked crows AND humans were part of nature. *shrugs*
The usage is that nature refers to everything else but us, which is a little bit of oxymoron.
You can read it two ways:
* Nature itself can teach nature to take care of the environment"
Or
* Another part of nature can teach our part of nature to take care of the environment.
I won't fault your response if it is:
Gee, no shit, Sherlock!
But yeah, either way, it is still an awkward phrasing.
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The usage is that nature refers to everything else but us, which is a little bit of oxymoron.
It seems fair to me to differentiate, since we're the only animals capable of doing a long-term study which tells us in detail what's wrong with our activity, which we then generally ignore.
Who is that anonymous commenter... (Score:2)
...who is mentioned in the article, and where can I subscribe to his newsletter?
Also, can we implement his suggestion nationwide, or at least buy pretrained crows to guard our own localities / follow us around and clear the area of those filthy ash-holes?
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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"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.
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"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... [slashdot.org]
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teach them... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15, 2017 @01:22AM (#55371305)
"Maybe teach the crows to attack the smoker until they pick it up."
Re:human smokers will be trained (Score:3)
by jellomizer ( 103300 ) Alter Relationship on Saturday October 14, 2017 @04:01PM (#55369553)
"Done give away their actual motive. We can make robots to clean the streets. But we need animals to actually attack the cause. Plausible deniability."
Checks out.
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extremely intolerant Antifa members.
Not tolerating people wh advocate genocide? Oh! the humanity!
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Not in the discussion. WTF?
Somewhat different wording but the last time this story was on Slashdot [slashdot.org], last october, there was a thread about crows attacking smokers [slashdot.org].
And, it appears that this "anonymous Slashdot reader" is not only ignorant of French culture, but one of those extremely intolerant Antifa members.
I don't see the issue with french culture and I'm not sure the editor is the one revealing personal bias here.
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is not only ignorant of French culture
Just because French culture is defined as a breakfast made of a bagette and a cigarette doesn't mean they shouldn't be actively mocked.
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Crows are surprisingly intelligent.
And rooks, which is the crow family member here, especially so.
Probably too intelligent for this system to work for long, because they'll quickly figure out how to deposit the same loot twice, or what else can be substituted that's easier to find, how to raid other sources, or something else we haven't anticipated.
hmmmm.... (Score:2)
There's a Youtuber named Aronra (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
Dolphins would be screwed even if they had hands with opposable thumbs, because they live underwater and thus cannot use fire. You'd have to give them antigrav harnesses (ala the aforementioned Uplift saga) along with the hands in order for them to move forwards.
Racoons, on the other hand, probably have enough manual dexterity already, and could potentially evolve more. Some of them get big enough to move large items around, so they seem like pretty good candidates if their species stuck around long enough.
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Haven't read that series, but could certainly get down with Racoons being enhanced. LeGuin and many others have had Racoon characters in a lot of stories: they're "fun and mischevious; the lovable little thief trope", and allows the author to display their comedic talents. Larry Niven's Ringworld universe includes dolphins that could make use of their intelligence. Mechanical "hands" were invented so the dolphins could manipulate their environment. With all the magnesium laying around at the bottom of the o
Crows are smart... (Score:3)
How long until they are swooping cigarettes from the mouths of those still smoking ? or bumming them verbally from other people. Hey Buddy gotta smoke I can bum, I need a crow pellet fix :)
Re: Crows are smart... (Score:2)
About as long as it has taken for crows to start swooping in and stealing food out of the hands or mouths of people.
So, it's gonna be a while...
Great idea, except (Score:2)
dasterdly (Score:2)
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Crows are not assholes? (Score:2)
Commenting (Score:2)
Cause I accidentally downmodded a funny comment.
Re:Crows Will Cheat (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what I thought too. The crows will eventually learn that small rocks and sticks will trigger the system.
Re:Crows Will Cheat (Score:5, 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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That's an excellent way to get nicotine addicts to start killing crows.
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Re: Crows Will Cheat (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.
Both are true (Score:2)
> 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
I've seen that too. I've called people out on it. For smokers, I've pointed out that making a mess is a great way to get management to make the whole place non-smoking.
ALSO I've looked for trash cans and ash trays in places one would definitely expect them to be, and found none. Entrances to malls and other places that people spend over an hour, but they can't smoke
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Putting bins by the entrance will encourage people to stand there, blocking the entrance and polluting the air.
Put the bins 200 yards away and use fire hoses on anything burning closer.
Re: Both are true (Score:2)
Then any smoker coming from another direction will miss it and throw it in the corner by the door, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
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Only if the fire hose misses them, and they're an ignorant fuck.
Re: Both are true (Score:2)
If you don't know where the receptacle is because some asshat hid it 200 feet away, then where do you expect people to deposit their burning butt?
You're a fucking moron or a facist; not sure which.
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Wait, I'm the moron? I'm not the fuckwit that carried a burning stick around without thinking about how to safely dispose of it without littering and/or causing a fire hazard.
People want to smoke, they should carry an ashtray.
Re: Both are true (Score:2)
I'm not sure you understand how fire works.
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I'm not sure you've properly explored the interaction of a fire hose and a lit cigarette, but keep failing miserably to understand my point if it helps you feel good about yourself.
Re: Crows Will Cheat (Score:2)
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My biggest motivator to quit is to not be associated with these assholes.
You could always switch to vaping, and be associated with a different group of assholes...
Teaching people to not act like 5 year olds who think it is everyone else's problem to clean up after them, is.
Best of luck with that, which I mean simultaneously sincerely and sarcastically.
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True that.
Perhaps we should train grizzly bears. Not to pick up trash and butts, but to attack directly the messy droppers! That would be solving the problem at its source, ne?
Maybe not grizzly bears: they'd be expensive to feed. Perhaps honey badgers?
Re: Crows Will Cheat (Score:2)
And how many of those people do you suppose have been conditioned by poor access to receptacles?
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Where I grew up, they decided to get rid of littering, and just cranked up the fines until people stopped. So it's a bit shocking, after having moved to a new city, to see people doing it.
The smokers somehow dodged most of the littering enforcement, so they still toss their butts everywhere. Except every once in a while there's a funny story, like some ass getting fined $10000 for tossing a butt out a car window while driving through a forest during fire season.
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As a former smoker, I can assure you the problem with cigarette butts has more to do with poor city governance than with the behavior of smokers.
You choosing to make litter in a place with no easy disposal is somehow the city's fault? How about some personal responsibility? How about carrying it home with you or not generating the litter in the first place.
If you find litter in your community and there's not a garbage can on every corner, then you should blame your incompetent city council, not litterbugs.
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You choosing to make litter in a place with no easy disposal is somehow the city's fault?
In the commons human nature is to litter. The city says you should not litter. Beyond asking nicely, what has the city done to modify human nature?
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The city says you should not litter.
It's not the city, it's other people asking if you can not shit everywhere and make the world a nasty place.
Beyond asking nicely, what has the city done to modify human nature?
Fine the shit out of people littering, I hope.
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I'm a distance runner. The thing I found most interesting when I visited Tokyo (on business, but I ran a minimum of six miles every morning for a week, setting out in a different direction every morning) was the total absence of garbage cans visible anywhere and how clean all the sidewalks and streets were.
I don't know if what I saw was a bizarre exception, but it was a clear and striking impression that I noticed and couldn't stop noticing the entire time I was there. So many people, so many buildings, no
Re: Crows Will Cheat (Score:2)
Not everyone is an asshole. I've been plenty of places without trashcans and I carry my trash until I find one. I also sometimes even pick up other trash I find if I have some easy way to carry it. I then wait till I find a trashcan. I've also never shit on the street. I always seem to manage to find a bathroom. The people who litter are assholes and many of them will litter even when there are nearby trashcans. Granted, frequent trashcans likely would reduce some of the trash but aggressive policing
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Europe has all that and still a huge littering problem. The US has none of it and comparatively little littering problems. You will also see that cities that have problems with littering follows a certain ideology.
In the area I currently live, we have signs saying: "Litter: $500 fine" (and in some areas like wildlife areas $1500) and they are enforced. In the city nearby, the fines are $100, the leftist mayor says those laws "target minorities" and littering is a huge problem.
In large cities they are often
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The crows will eventually learn that small rocks and sticks will trigger the system.
. . . and here I thought the crows would learn to start stealing packs of cigarettes out of the hands of people, and start chain smoking to support their bird feed nugget habit . . .
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The crows will eventually learn that small rocks and sticks will trigger the system.
The system already prevents that through image recognition [crowdedcities.com]: After the camera has recognised the cigarette filter as a filter, it returns a bit of food to the table in front of the crow.
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They'll just start smoking their own [makeameme.org].
And 2nd time. I just woke up to trained cows (Score:2)
I read it a couple of times and still saw trained cows. Wjen I got to the mention of "birds" I backed to see if they said it was bovines and avians.
Of course, I just woke up from a nap so my eyes and brain are foggy.
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Maybe not but they are all ash-holes.
Re:It's fun to hate on smokers (Score:5, Insightful)
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True, but if you just have to smoke in public and
No need to continue. If you smoke in public, you're being an asshole. The end.
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If they are smoking there is a good chance they are unable to extinguish themselves.
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But let's not forget they're not all arseholes.
I never met one yet that thought twice about throwing the butt on the floor when there's no ashtray within eight inches.
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What's needed is cigarette packs with a butt-compartment on the bottom - so the fabled "non asshole smokers" can take their butts home with them.
Re: It's fun to hate on smokers (Score:3)
You apparently have a poor imagination. There are absolutely reasons to smoke.
For instance, the number one reason is because you want to.
Re: It's fun to hate on smokers (Score:5, 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 [gallup.com]
Re: It's fun to hate on smokers (Score:2)
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Yeah, who would be stupid enough to hold a lithium battery close to his face and carry it everyday in his pocket.
AFAICT, all the vapesplosions so far have involved modified or custom rigs, though it's probably true that there are low-end vapes which come without any current protection. If you buy from a reputable shop, though, you can be sure that this is not a problem. I've got a vape pen I'm pretty happy with, although the next one I buy will definitely have a USB socket instead of requiring that special charger.
Yea, I wonder (Score:2)
Yeah, who would be stupid enough to hold a lithium battery close to his face and carry it everyday in his pocket.
6.8 billion people have cell phone subscriptions.
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using it is as stupid as smoking.
That is provably false.
Re: It's fun to hate on smokers (Score:4)
The number one reason for smoking is addiction.
Quitting is easy, I have done it many times.
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Christ, I'm fucking worthless some days.
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Wait .....What? Dumbass me read cows rather than crows.
Christ, I'm fucking worthless some days.
It seems like half of slashdot read it as cows, which is proof (if it were needed) that there aren't many country-dwellers here. The idea that you could train a cow to do anything other than eat grass and shit is laughable.
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I believe it was the Apostle Paul who once said, "In all of your undertakings, settle not for a half-assed job. Instead, thou should endeavour to use both cheeks."
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"unattended consequences"
I HATE unattended consequences. They're even worse than unintended consequences.
Are you paying attention?
Paying attention? Obviously not, because he is not attending the consequences. :-P
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indeed, get rid of the filter and send smokers to hell faster, the're a net negative walking around on two legs