Steve Joy
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2017
4:39 · 301K views · Oct 26, 2014
A short demonstration of a crow using a purpose-built vending machine, in which the bird exchanges objects for rewards. The creator sells the machine as a kit.
Linked in crow-intelligence threads as concrete evidence that crows can learn to trade coins or tokens for food.
3 comments from Hacker News
How is his claim holding up, or is he promising too much? Since it's the last news of the thing for captive crows were from 2012 and there is also [thecrowbox] and a correction of the correction [2]. There is still no working version for wild crows[3]. I just still don't know what to make of this since I can hardly see bad intentions other than being a bit overly enthusiastic about the whole thing while producing somewhat underwhelming results in practice. If it would have been some sort of hoax or stunt he probably would have said something by now, like it was an art project or some media hack or anything else along those lines. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] Bonus: Here is another guys, Steve Joy, vending machine (mentioned in the thecrowbox user group) which seem to actually work. this video
I think some birds are actually pretty smart and can learn by imitating other birds, so it's a cultural thing. All it takes is one bird to discover it. Take a look at this video: "Crow uses a vending machine". It was an experiment where they trained crows to collect coins and put them into a vending machine for a few grains. this video
They've even learned to pick up coins and use them in a vending machine in exchange for rewards: this video