09/07/2026
In Sweden, clever crows learned to exchange discarded butts for food.
In 2022, a startup called Corvid Cleaning tested the unusual idea in Södertälje, a city near Stockholm.
The company designed a special machine that rewarded wild crows with food whenever they dropped a collected litter inside. The birds participated voluntarily and were trained gradually.
The project remained an experimental pilot, and its long-term effectiveness was never proven on a citywide scale. Still, it demonstrated how remarkably quickly these intelligent birds can learn new tasks.
A fascinating reminder: smarter cities may emerge when human innovation works alongside nature, rather than simply working around it.
