This is clever. But in a way, it’s also shifting the environmental impact from these bottle caps. I can’t imagine under which conditions the birds’ may be a problem (e.g. getting too much food). Maybe someone with better knowledge on these species can tell if there could be a downside (no matter how improbable, just the risk of X). Such risk may include the interaction through second or third organisms (e.g. lack of seed spread, abundance of parasitic prokaryotr, etc.)
Biological question aside, anyway… This is so cool! I’d like to try building one myself ;)
Can’t find it now but I recall a documentary where they did exactly the same thing but trained the birds to bring real money coins.
Somehow they got coins from somewhere to pay for food.
I wish I knew enough Fallout lore to make a joke about this.
Gary!
OK but how can you tell if the caps they turn in are actual litter and not from bottles they bought themselves? Seems like an easy system to exploit
I was expecting we’d have robots do this in the future but if birds can do it instead then it’s cool with me
Of course, some might say there’s no difference
