This afternoon I left a bag of groceries outside in the snow to make some space for them in the freezer. I came upstairs to an odd sound - was the cat outside, scratching at the door? No. It was an enormous crow, or maybe even a raven, pecking at the frozen chicken. Erg.
The upside of that encounter was that it reminded me of this TED talk by Joshua Klein, on the intelligence of crows. He's developed a vending machine for crows that explores the possibility of changing our mutual relationship for the better. In his own words:
A decade ago a friend told me it’d be impossible to get crows to do anything useful, and that killing them all off would be better. Finally, I did something about it to prove him wrong.
Synanthropes are animals that live near humans, and they’re an unusual type of species of which crows are an unusually smart example. The crowbox is a means of creating a mutually beneficial relationship with them – instead of trying to destroy them.
Oh, and one last thing - Joshua Klein is on Twitter: @joshuaklein.