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We have a thread for animals trained and / or employed in warfare:
Animal Army (Trained Animals Employed in Warfare)
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...rmy-trained-animals-employed-in-warfare.8308/
... but none for animals trained to perform everyday (as opposed to military) tasks on a partially or wholly autonomous basis. The key word is 'autonomous'. My intended context is not that of (e.g.) guide dogs working alongside humans, but cases more accurately reflecting animals working on their own for human purposes.
Here (below) is an example.
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63320-crows-pick-up-trash-theme-park.html
Animal Army (Trained Animals Employed in Warfare)
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...rmy-trained-animals-employed-in-warfare.8308/
... but none for animals trained to perform everyday (as opposed to military) tasks on a partially or wholly autonomous basis. The key word is 'autonomous'. My intended context is not that of (e.g.) guide dogs working alongside humans, but cases more accurately reflecting animals working on their own for human purposes.
Here (below) is an example.
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Brainy Crows Trained to Pick Up Trash at Theme Park
A team of trained birds will really clean up at a French theme park, where they will collect and discard cigarette butts and other bits of trash.
Six rooks — a type of bird in the crow family, native to Europe and parts of Scandinavia and Asia — are expected to get to work this week picking up litter at Puy du Fou, a park that features period villages and gardens, as well as historic re-enactments, performances and events ...
The avian trash collectors were raised in captivity and trained by Christophe Gaborit, a falconer and project manager with the park's Academy of Falconry, so you might say that the birds got their job through crow-nyism.
Gaborit was inspired to recruit the rooks (Corvus frugilegus) by something he saw 20 years ago: a group of wild ravens sifting through natural litter in a field ... If corvids — the family that includes crows, ravens and rooks — were already inclined to sort materials in their habitat, perhaps they could be trained to identify and discard litter left behind by humans ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63320-crows-pick-up-trash-theme-park.html