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Cool study and application for crow-treat exchanges. But the image is AI. That is some gibberish Swedish text.
Yes, the font is weird, and it wouldn't make sense to have an LCD screen for that, also with a full steel construction
Actual machine is way less fancy:
Source: the daily mail, so I won't link that shit
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This is much more than mildly interesting. I find this fascinating! The crows being so capable. The cleverly constructed symbiotic relationship. The fact that such machines are funded at all. Maybe I’m just jealous of what European countries can do with with public funds 😒
The swedish spelling is amusingly incorrect, so this is probably fake, possibly ai slop.
The issue is the crows are going to learn about this, and start just fishing rubbish out of bins, because it's the easiest way to get their reward.
There was once a Parisian dog who kept trying to push children into the Seine, because he had learned that if he ha saved a drowning child he gets tons of rewards.
This phenomenon is called Perverse Incentive , also known as the Cobra Effect.
For people who don’t want to watch a video, here’s the Wikipedia explanation:
The results of a perverse incentive scheme are also sometimes called cobra effects, where people are incentivized to make a problem worse. This name was coined by economist Horst Siebert in 2001 based on a historically dubious anecdote taken from the British Raj. According to the story, the British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped, and the cobra breeders set their snakes free, leading to an overall increase in the wild cobra population.
It's how corporate America operates.
Fucking Cobra Kai
Is the firebug phenomenon part of this?
Wait till you hear about humans and capitalism.
Or stealing cigarettes from shops
Or stealing lit cigarettes out of human mouths. That’s a kind of comedy gold I can get behind.
This crow I can support.
Now we are making crows work too 😞
Their intelligence will be their downfall.
Unless I missed something, it seems like the crows are doing it voluntarily. Is that not the case?
Aren't we all working voluntarily? Or are some of us enslaved property?
Some people won't be happy until the tyranny of extrinsic motivation is entirely banished. I wish them well, so I try to keep them motivated with little treats at semi-random intervals.
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What a great scheme.
Crows are susceptible to chronic liver disease if they live in urban areas (particularly near restaurants or markets). I looked it up because it's happened to a few crows in my urban area who have grown long, thin deformed beaks, and I was curious what was causing it - apparently a fat-heavy diet which leads to chronic disease is the most common cause. They can also get sick or diseased from scavenging tainted or toxic food.
I can't find any info for crows being able to contract diseases from humans, so it's low risk for them collecting cigarette waste.
So this scheme is win-win - crows adapted to urban areas pick up litter with no (or very low) risk to themselves, get safe and nutritious food.
So uh... Can only crows take advantage of these machines?
What if I finish my smoke and want some peanuts? Can I just put my butt in the machine?
Only if you have a work visa. Don't want foreigners stealing crow work.
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I think he's seen just about everything because he's seen an elephant fly
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So what's the take away from rhis ? humans can't be trained not to throw cig butts out ?
And take away jobs from crows? Are you trying to start a war we can not win?
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That isn't mildly interesting. It's extremely interesting.
I haven't read the whole thing yet but I couldn't find anything about the effect picking up this toxic shit has on the birds' health. I can't imagine this is healthy for them.
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I think it would be a lot easier to train humans to stop throwing cigarette butts on the ground
Or even to train other humans to tell humans not to do that
Or train other humans to penalize, threaten or punish other humans who throw cigarette butts on the ground
That's what we've tried for hundreds of years and it didn't work.
Turns out it's easier to turn to a more intelligent species 😉
I think it would be really hard. The humans in charge of humans would just form some sort of in-group and stop enforcing the original rule.
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Hmm. If I want a peanut, can I do the same thing?
Wouldn't this potentially pose health risks to them?
They simply don't inhale.
Are they in line to use the machine? I don't understand why they're not fighting over the dispensed peanuts. Hierarchy maybe?
Edit: answers and video
I wonder if there are any downsides to machines like this. For example, do the birds grow dependent on the machines to survive? If so, what happens if smoking rates drop?
There's also the concern of the tobacco. Butts aren't just filters, there's plenty of sweet addictive nicotine left usually.
What’s the lifespan of a crow? If they have short lives but breed fast, one lean generation won’t be catastrophic, and enough of their young will astor to a tobacco-free world. In reality, the rate of decline in smoking will probably be sufficiently slow that, rather than being a catastrophic cliff, it will be a nudge to prioritise alternative means of sustenance.
How long till they work out there's butts in that easily accessible plastic tub and unlocks the infinite peanut glitch.
If the machine can accept an unused cigarette, then they might start stealing them
Win win.
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TIL crows can read Swedish
Just the swedish ones. I held up a sign in my yard that said free peanuts and some of them came right away but when I held up a swedish sign they all completely ignored me. This was in America though, so they're likely just uneducated.
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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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