All Over Albany

Find those crows a job

Bird brains.

Albany's crow problem is apparently serious enough that the city is now employing fireworks and lasers in an attempt to scare away the flocks. And as we can attest, the huge murders are kind of freaky.

But the city might be going about this wrong way. Maybe it just needs to find those crows a job.

Really. Crows happen to be very smart. They've actually been observed making and using simple tools.

Joshua Klein, a grad student at NYU, figured out a way to put these bird brains to work. He designed a vending machine for crows -- and then trained them to use coins to "buy" peanuts. From his site:

So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other.

Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue. The crows continue to amaze us with their abilities, so who knows?

The last we checked, the City of Albany could use some extra coin. Heck, it probably wouldn't hurt to have someone help it sort garbage, either.

And from what we understand, crows can be badasses who keep grudges. Maybe trying to tick them off with lasers isn't the way to go.

We're only about 1/2 joking. OK, maybe more like 3/4.

photo: Joshua Klein