Crows in France are trained to clean in exchange for food.
A historical park in France undertook to train the birds to clean the cigarette butts but also the small garbage that people throw away. The Theme Park ExperimentPuy du Fou” at Les Epesses was held in 2018 with six “highly intelligent” birds, learning to pick up litter and drop it into a container with a food reward.
The main founder of the park Christophe Gaborit first trained two birds using a box with two compartments. In one they throw the garbage and in the other box they reward them with food. Although the intention is not to use crows as scavengers, the park he hopes the particular birds will help people not litter.
A video shared by National Geographic shows the crows at work, clearing the ground by picking up bits of rubbish before returning to a wooden box. The majority of the box contained cigarette butts.
“I wish they could take the trash to the people who threw it on the ground”someone commented. “Now, it would be nice if we could train people to pick up their trashadded another, while a third said:I love crows, they are so smart! People are so lazy, most of the trash was cigarette butts».
