Summary: The Crowbar should work in this way: the crows fit a cigarette filter in a special hole, where a camera performs a check to determine whether it is indeed a stub. If the match is positive, the Crowbar returns to crow a piece of food. It's up to the animal and then share this knowledge with their classmates of his species, or keep the secret to themselves.

The cigarette butts are the most widespread rejection in the world, even if they are the subject of a fascinating branch of archeology that allow to obtain valuable information on the smoking community.
According to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health cigarette butts are one of the most common wastes and from which it is more difficult to free.
In Italy, for example, it is estimated that the weight of butts abandoned in the environment is 13,000 tons per year.
How to get rid of it in a sustainable way?
Crowded Cities, a Dutch startup, founded by designer Ruben van der Vleuten and Bob Spikman, proposes to solve the problem asking for help to the crows.
According to data reported on their website, 98 percent of cigarette filters are made of plastic fibers that require 12 years to degrade and, every year, all over the world are abandoned 4.5 trillion cigarettes in the Netherlands alone, the country where work the two designers are 6 billion butts.
So, the duo decided to create the first prototypes of containers for cigarette butts baptized crowbar.
The Crowbar should work in this way: the crows fit a cigarette filter in a special hole, where a camera performs a check to determine whether it is indeed a stub.
If the match is positive, the Crowbar returns to crow a piece of food.
It's up to the animal and then share this knowledge with their classmates of his species, or keep the secret to themselves.
Picture of the prototype crowbar on.
A study published in Science, has highlighted the crows' ability to organize themselves in view of future events - a skill observed until now only in the larger primates and humans except me.
The trick is to reject an immediate reward because they are aware of being able to get better in the future.
During tests conducted for the study, the crows were offered a reward in exchange for bottle caps or stones activating a in a mechanism similar to how it could be done with the crowbar, the funniest thing is that one of the ravens had found a way to tamper with the device to obtain immediately all the food without being forced to carry the stone each time.
Scientists were forced to remove that crow from the tests because they ran the risk that teach others how to hack the experiment crows.
It will happen the same also to the Dutch crows who will work for Crowded Cities?
The experiment of Crowded Cities, however, is part of a partially different speech, Ruben van der Vleuten and Bob Spikman, in fact, were inspired for their work to American Joshua Klein who developed a project to teach ravens collect the coins on the street in exchange for a reward in the form of food.
According to studies carried out by Klein, adaptation has led several animal species to survive even in urban contexts, the problem is that this occurs only in the form of what might be called 'parasitism.'
For Klein, a much smarter way of doing this fruitful coexistence, rather than groped to exterminate them, it is to bring the animals to perform useful tasks for our society.
We give confidence to the crows.

From Vice