Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In Sweden, they are training crows to pick up cigarette butts! Although this may seem like an extremely strange thing to do, this isn't the first time that humanity has trained birds to do things that it can't (or won't) do itself.
In the 1940s, after seeing how many bombs had to be dropped just to hit one target and the devastation this caused, Burrhus Frederic Skinner decided to design a missile guidance system using Pigeons.
The project initially started as one pigeon held in a sock with the toe cut off to make a hole for its head, controlling the bomb's guidance fins with levers actuated by its head.
By the 1950s it had escalated to three pigeons housed in the bomb's nosecone controlling the bomb by pecking on the conductive glass nose cone with metal tabs attached to their beaks, however, advancements in the field of electronic guidance systems led to the project being killed in 1953.
In 2018, a french theme park used 6 specially trained Rooks to clean up bottle caps and cigarette butts and in 2020, Hans Forsberg invented a clever machine that dispenses peanuts when a bottle cap is introduced, he then trained local birds (including magpies) to use the machine.
Now in a Swedish city about 30 km from Stockholm a project called Corvid Cleaning is implementing variants of this machine and teaching crows to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for a treat. The idea is that other birds will see that the crows are rewarded for collecting cigarette butts and copy their actions.
Cigarette butts are exempt from Sweden's littering laws and so they make up 62% of all waste collected on streets, beaches and parks and the cost of picking them up is estimated to be around 0.8 Krona per butt (which is about 9 cents)
The estimated cost per butt of the Corvid Cleaning system is 0.2 Krona (around 2 cents) making the crow system a crazy but viable option.
Do you think using crows is a good idea?
Comment Below!
and please like and subscribe for more.
Get more Tips here! destinationtips.com
In Sweden, they are training crows to pick up cigarette butts! Although this may seem like an extremely strange thing to do, this isn't the first time that humanity has trained birds to do things that it can't (or won't) do itself.
In the 1940s, after seeing how many bombs had to be dropped just to hit one target and the devastation this caused, Burrhus Frederic Skinner decided to design a missile guidance system using Pigeons.
The project initially started as one pigeon held in a sock with the toe cut off to make a hole for its head, controlling the bomb's guidance fins with levers actuated by its head.
By the 1950s it had escalated to three pigeons housed in the bomb's nosecone controlling the bomb by pecking on the conductive glass nose cone with metal tabs attached to their beaks, however, advancements in the field of electronic guidance systems led to the project being killed in 1953.
In 2018, a french theme park used 6 specially trained Rooks to clean up bottle caps and cigarette butts and in 2020, Hans Forsberg invented a clever machine that dispenses peanuts when a bottle cap is introduced, he then trained local birds (including magpies) to use the machine.
Now in a Swedish city about 30 km from Stockholm a project called Corvid Cleaning is implementing variants of this machine and teaching crows to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for a treat. The idea is that other birds will see that the crows are rewarded for collecting cigarette butts and copy their actions.
Cigarette butts are exempt from Sweden's littering laws and so they make up 62% of all waste collected on streets, beaches and parks and the cost of picking them up is estimated to be around 0.8 Krona per butt (which is about 9 cents)
The estimated cost per butt of the Corvid Cleaning system is 0.2 Krona (around 2 cents) making the crow system a crazy but viable option.
Do you think using crows is a good idea?
Comment Below!
and please like and subscribe for more.
Get more Tips here! destinationtips.com
