Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

Re:Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food by spaceribs on Monday October 16, 2017 @07:26PM (#15487477)

> they can take comfort that schemes like this should further raise the intelligence of crows to the point they'll have a shot at overthrowing the unjust reign of we naked apes.

Here's the thing I think you're missing with this statement though, our rise to intelligence had nothing to do with a superior species endowing us with a head start. In fact, for early man it might have hobbled us to not be challenged because we're "really good at picking up cigarette butts".

Also, do you want to be the one that explains to the super-intelligent crows how we used them to pick up garbage?

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Re:Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food by joe_the_user on Monday October 16, 2017 @08:01PM (#15487656)

It would be pretty much impossible for another intelligent species to appear on earth now without relating to human beings as a context. I mean, the relationship I was groping for above is Synanthrope[1]. Basically, an entire ecosystem of animals eating and using human garbage already exists - what else do you imagine these animal eat? Giving animals some training to also pick-up said garbage seems neither better nor worse than the status quo.

Plus, I don't think anyone will be doing any explaining to the crows - if the crows rise, they're be using fire and poison to exterminate them in the fashion we would use if one another species seemed to threaten our dominance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanthrope

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Re:Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food by Mtinie on Monday October 16, 2017 @10:18PM (#15488158)

Unless we create them. There will always be a point that the apex predators fail to recognize the threat until it is too late.

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