Newscripts
Crow expert John Marzluff of the University of Washington suggested that we ought to butt out of crows’ business. He did not doubt that the the birds could be taught the job but crowed that people should clean up their own messes instead of leaving it to the birds.
Curating quirky science since 1943
Rank roost
Crowbar aims to draw crow crowd
espite their reputation for wisdom, owls sometimes make crappy choices. As the people at the Teton Raptor Center’s PooPoo Project will tell you, it’s fairly common for certain owls and other cavity-nesting bird species to mistake the vent pipes of vault toilets on public
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xperts on crows and their corvid cousins often object to the derogatory phrase “bird brain” because this group of birds is, actually, really smart. Crows can recognize faces, teach one another, and use tools to gather food, and they show other hallmarks of braininess once thought to be reserved for the cleverest of mammals. Dutch designers Ruben van der Vleuten and Bob Spikman have a plan to capitalize on crow know-how to solve a global problem: keeping cigarette butts off the street. It’s not a small issue. Some 4.5 trillion cigarette butts become litter per year, making them the most littered item on the planet. Butts are made of cellulose acetate, a recalcitrant material on its own, and after the cigarette has been smoked, the butts are loaded with toxins including nicotine, arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. The duo’s idea is that crows could be taught to recognize and collect the butts, then drop them in a birdfeeder-like contraption Flushed: This long-eared owl had a foul encounter in in exchange for a treat. It the toilet. builds on work by Seattle hacker and writer Joshua lands for hollowed trees—and then to get stuck in the Klein, who trained capmuck below. The Poo-Poo Project is working to spare tive crows to use a vending these birds that horrific fate. machine he designed. The crows The origin story for the Poo-Poo Project stars Joe learned to deposit coins found on the Foust, a biologist who netted a boreal owl out of a pit ground into the machine, which then toilet in the Boise National Forest in 2010 after finddispensed a treat. (You can sign up at ing a sticky note on the door that said something like his Crow Box web“Owl in toilet. Don’t use.” Word reached the folks at site to be notified the Teton Raptor Center, and they said never again. when the latest The group has designed a simple cover for vent machine is ready pipes, the chimneylike structures that channel the Birds with butts: to order, so you can particflorid air from the cavities of outhouses skyward. It’s Could we hook crows ipate in your own backyard a heavy-duty screen mounted about 2 cm above the on cleaning up? crow behavior experiments. chimney top, costs just $30, and takes minutes to Arduino programming and “basic soldering and asinstall. The design allows the gases to get out, even if sembly skills” required.) the screen is covered with leaves or snow, but doesn’t Van der Vleuten and Spikman call their setup the let shelter-seeking birds in. Crowbar. A camera within would verify that a The cover is now in use in all 50 U.S. states, deposited object is indeed a butt and not some and not just for potties. Irrigation, mining other detritus before dispensing a morsel of operations, and other applications that use Jessica Marshall food. Last month they acknowledged to Fast hollow vertical pipes have installed the screen. wrote this week’s Company that a first step is to make sure the The Poo-Poo Project sold its 10,000th screen column. Please butts don’t harm the crows. But if the birds this summer, sparing untold numbers of send comments can handle them without incident, the project birds—and good Samaritan biologists—from and suggestions to could be a win-win, Klein told the publication. future foul encounters.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | NOVEMBER 13, 2017
C R E D I T: S H UT T E RSTO CK /C& E N ( C ROW) ; U. S . B UR EAU O F L A N D MA N AG EM E N T (OW L )
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