Swedish firm trains crows to pick up cigarette butts. Read full story here

A Swedish startup is training crows to pick up cigarette butts from the streets.

In a surprising incident, a Swedish firm is deploying crows to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets. Known as scavengers of nature, crows already have an embedded trait of picking up stuff. Now, the Swedish firm, named Södertälje is training a number of crows to do the task in return for food.

According to a report by The Guardian, Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, the company behind the method said, “They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis. “They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other. At the same time, there’s a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish. The estimation for the cost of picking up cigarette butts today is around 80 öre [Swedish change] or more per cigarette butt, some say two kronor. If the crows pick up cigarette butts, this would maybe be 20 öre per cigarette butt. The saving for the municipality depends on how many cigarette butts the crows pick up.”

Swedish enterprise Corvid Cleaning is testing a reward-based system where crows picking up cigarette butts and drop them into a trash can. Peanuts are then dispensed as a reward pic.twitter.com/3qjF2JrX0s

New Caledonian crows, a species of crows that possess the intelligence of a seven-year-old human child, are being used for the job. However, Södertälje is carrying out several tests before potentially rolling out the operation across the city, with the health of the birds being the key consideration given the type of waste involved.

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