One person at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida filmed the remarkable moment that a raven was seen collecting an empty plastic bottle and putting it in a recycle bin before flying away.
The bird was a white-necked raven and its eco-friendly action has gone viral.
But before you start thinking that even birds have become concerned at the amount of trash in the environment, corvid expert Kaeli Swift clarified that the bird had been trained to do it.
Watch the raven recycling below.
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Video credit: Rumble
Swift wrote on Twitter, saying: “The idea that corvids can be trained to pick up and dispose of garbage is no surprise.
”You might have a dog, or have seen dogs trained to put their toys away, for example. This is hardly different from training that.”
And this isn’t the first time, either.
Six crows at French theme park Puy du Fou were taught to recycle in 2018 in order “to educate visitors to respect nature.”
Theme park president Nicolas de Villiers said at the time, “The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean, but to show nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment.”
The World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri also trained one raven to recycle and the bird received Internet fame after a re-posted video by biological psychologist Dan Quintana that alluded to Joseph Jastrow’s optical illusion of a bird and a rabbit.
Paige Davis, curator of bird training at the World Bird Sanctuary, explained how corvids are trained to perform a task.
“Training this behavior starts with small steps, making sure the bird is comfortable with the items first. Rewarding the bird for picking up the bottle, for accidentally dropping in into the bin, and then shaping the behavior.
“Our training at World Bird Sanctuary is focused around positive reinforcement, so our birds get their favorite treats for choosing to recycle. If the birds don’t want to do something, they don’t have to.”
“Corvids are so intelligent. It can make training them more difficult because they may outsmart their trainers. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with new fun things for our corvids to do, even though the training sessions don’t always go the way I anticipate.”
Davis added that caching, which is a natural behavior in corvids, plays a role in the training.
As the term implies, caching refers to the method by which animals hoard objects. Nicola Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, explained that corvids cache by usually hiding food and even non-food items such as stones in crevices that are well-hidden.
As to the efforts at addressing climate change, Professor Clayton said: “It’s interesting that it’s a corvid that’s doing this because of all the non-human animals studied by scientists, they’re one of the very few to have sophisticated planning abilities.
“It would be brilliant if we could encourage all animals we share the planet with, especially human beings, to clear up after themselves and it’s certainly interesting the idea of planning and saving our planet.”
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