Animal behavior stuff that I picked up in the New York Times yesterday
that I thought would amuse you.
Best,
Chris
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Vending Machine for Crows
BY CLAIRE TRAGESER
In June, Josh Klein revealed his master’s-thesis project to a
flock of crows at the Binghamton Zoo in south-central New York
State. The New York University graduate student offered the
birds coins and peanuts from a dish attached to a vending
machine he’d created, then took the peanuts away. Klein designed
the machine so that when the crows searched for the missing
peanuts, they pushed the coins out of a dish into a slot,
causing more peanuts to be released into the dish. The
Binghamton crows quickly learned that dropping nickels and dimes
into the slot produced peanuts, and the most resourceful members
of the flock began looking for more coins. Within a month, Klein
had a flock of crows scouring the ground for loose change.
Now Klein is working with graduate students at Cornell
University and Binghamton University to study how wild crows
make use of his machine. Although his invention might conjure
Hitchcock-worthy visions of crows stealing the loose change from
pedestrians’ pockets and hands, Klein’s conception is more
benign. To Klein, the machine demonstrates the value of
cooperating with “synanthropes” — animals that have adapted
seamlessly to human environments. “Rather than just killing off
a species, why not see if they can do something useful for us,
so we can all live in close proximity?” he said. To pursue his
research, he founded the Synanthropy Foundation this year.
Someday, he hopes, similar techniques may allow us to train rats
to sort our garbage for us.
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