If you’ve been paying attention, you know that corvids (crows, rooks and ravens) are remarkably intelligent birds. Now these feathered geniuses have been given a job. Six rooks have been trained to pick up rubbish in the Puy du Fou historical theme park in western France.

Whenever Boubou, Bamboo, Bill, Black, Bricole and Baco deposit a cigarette butt or other small piece of trash in a special receptacle, it dispenses a treat — rewarding the rooks for their efforts.

The idea came from one of the park’s falconers, Christophe Gaborit. As part of the falconry show, crows had already been trained to pick up roses and bring them to a princess — so in the 2000s, Gaborit raised and trained two rooks to do the same with rubbish.

The training system is not dissimilar to experimental setups for testing corvid intelligence, in which a dispenser issues a food reward when a crow correctly performs a task.

Earlier this year, we saw research in which a type of “vending machine” was used to teach crows how to tear paper into a specific shape. Ten years ago, hacker Josh Klein built a similar vending machine to reward crows for retrieving lost money. So we know the concept works.

The rooks were deployed for the first time in August, and they’ll be working four days a week under close supervision — not for the birds, but to make sure the humans don’t deliberately drop rubbish to watch the birds clean it up.

That’s because the aim of the rook garbage collectors isn’t solely to collect garbage — it’s also to get park-goers to think before they litter.

“The purpose of the crows is to educate the people, to open their minds, to think, ‘OK, the birds are able to do something that we are much more able to do than them, so we should do this by ourselves,’” said park president Nicolas de Villiers.

“It’s a funny way to show people that they cannot throw things everywhere.”

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【取回】qǔhuí retrieve get and bring back

【故意地】gùyì de deliberately consciously and intentionally, on purpose

如果你平时留心的话，应该知道鸦科动物（乌鸦、白嘴鸦和渡鸦）是绝顶聪慧的鸟类。现在这些智商超群的鸟儿们得到了一份工作：6只白嘴鸦接受训练后将在法国西部的历史主题公园“狂人国”捡垃圾。

这6只白嘴鸦的名字分别叫波波、斑布、比尔、布莱克、布里克尔和巴科。它们将烟头或其他垃圾碎屑放到一个特别的容器中，容器就会发放一个小食，来奖赏白嘴鸦的劳动。

想出这一主意的是公园一个名为克里斯托弗·盖伯里特的放鹰员。训练乌鸦衔玫瑰献给公主，本就是放鹰秀的节目之一。于是在2000年到2010年间，盖伯里特就驯养了两只白嘴鸦来捡垃圾。

这种训练体制和测试鸦类智商的试验安排并无不同，都是在乌鸦准确执行任务后由分配器发放食物奖励。

今年早前曾有研究用一种“自动售货

机”教乌鸦如何将纸撕成特定的形状。十年前，黑客乔什·克莱恩制造过一个类似的售货机来奖励找回丢失钱币的乌鸦。由此可见，这一理念还是可行的。

白嘴鸦八月首次出动去捡垃圾，它们将在密切监视下每周工作四天，不是要监视鸟，而是为了确保没有人为了看乌鸦捡垃圾而故意丢垃圾。

这是因为让白嘴鸦做清洁工的目的不只是为了捡垃圾，还为了让公园里的游客在丢垃圾前三思。

公园负责人尼古拉斯·德·维利尔斯说：“让乌鸦捡垃圾的目的是教育人们，引发人们的思

考：乌鸦能做的这件事情对我们来说轻而易举，我们应该自己把垃圾扔进垃圾箱。”

“这是教育大家不要乱扔垃圾的一种有趣的方式。”

(Chinadaily.com.cn)