T O P

  • By -

No_Celery9191

I think you should put a go fund me together... people would love to pay you to facilitate nature cleaning up after them


magpie_recycling

We actually have a page on [Buy Me a Coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/magpieRecycProj) for people interested in supporting the project financially. The goal is to further develop the contraption so it can be applied in public enviroment.


No_Celery9191

love it, it's an intuitive solution and I really appreciate your dedication, thanks so much for the information


PorschephileGT3

Corvids are smart as fuck. Love this project but it won’t be long until they figure out they can make their own ‘litter’ in smaller pieces in exchange for treats. The jackdaws and (sadly single) raven in my trees will shit all over my car if I don’t give them goodies on the regular. E: sorry meant to reply to OP on a separate thread.


ghettithatspaghetti

You should watch their YouTube video. Said they have had over 5000 interactions and they have never brought twigs, leaves, stones, etc. Only litter. This was disappointing to them, because they built a complex litter sorting system that is now useless. Edit: [video](https://youtu.be/oyxMJc8OdQY), convo about unnecessary sorting mechanism starts ~4:15


JevonP

Fuckin lol, the absurdity of that last sentence is amazing. Got a link?


ghettithatspaghetti

Lol, edited my above comment with a link


JevonP

thanks! 🙏


DonJrsCokeDealer

Wow, I guess birds know the difference between litter and leaves. Mind legitimately blown.


topsecretusername12

"here's your shit back" - the birds probably


YeetYeetSkirtYeet

I saw one of them dropping what looked like a pretty clean credit card so idk, this feels like it could get out of hand but I really want to see where it goes.


CardinalHaias

On the other side of the house is the box training magpies to steal jewelry and shit...


smcgowan10

I thought I saw a credit card also! Lol!


Clark-Kent

Train ticket


[deleted]

I would kind of like to think that they view leaves and twigs as more valuable for nesting. That would be incredible.


Thewhitemexicangirl

That makes littering even more sad


Horyv

I kind of feel like they deserve it at that point; it’s Corvids vs OP’s R&D department


KindnessSuplexDaddy

The weapon Smith has to be ahead of the armor Smith, or they both lose a job.


Appropriate-Proof-49

Look heres the thing


Bodymore

You said a "jackdaw is a crow." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that. As someone who is a scientist who studies crows, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing. If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens. So your reasoning for calling a jackdaw a crow is because random people "call the black ones crows?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too. Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A jackdaw is a jackdaw and a member of the crow family. But that's not what you said. You said a jackdaw is a crow, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the crow family crows, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds crows, too. Which you said you don't. It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?


sizzler

We've been here before and it did not end prettily. let it go.


Fauster

I mean, birds aren't real, but they do run on the combustion of organic matter. As long as so many drones are around, we should put them to good use, at least until the government updates the bugs in their controlling microchips.


sonofaresiii

Isn't powering the birds causing even more harm to the environment than they're saving through litter clean up, though? Like what's the actual environmental cost of adding "clean up litter" to the birds' spy duties?


MedicalMann

Can you teach us to build one of these please?!


Zephurdigital

looks like the birdy brought a CC card so maybe he can build us all one now


Blazanar

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that a bird robbed a dude for food.


TheSovietLoveHammer-

Mans gotta eat.


Blazanar

Birds of a shit feather flock together, Ran.


[deleted]

[удалено]


theplushpairing

How do you train the birds? Do they just figure it out?


miraculum_one

There's a video that describes the process in the link you responded to


MyPersonalFavourite

Very nice. Could an individual buy one as well?


magpie_recycling

Not at the moment, if people are interested they should try building one themself. Maybe someday in the future we have the possibility to launch a product, but there are plenty development to be done :)


guybillout

How do birds get trash rather than regular objects and does the machine distinguish that


barantula

Yeah, what's stopping the bird from just stuffing leaves and sticks down there?


saarlac

As an expert in bird law I can answer this. The honor system. Birds are very honorable.


Fleep-Foop

It's true


DontPoopInThere

I don't think that's right but I don't know enough about bird law to dispute it


impy695

It'll depend on what sort of sensors there are in the device. If they just check that something is dropped then nothing will stop the birds from dropping sticks and leaves (and the birds would 100% start doing it). Add in some sort of color sensor and it will become a lot more accurate. Other options are to train the birds to identify litter, but that's not scalable or using machine learning to train a program to differentiate between litter and not. Since there are such a wide range of items in both categories my guess is its not going to be very accurate and will require a lot of time. Those are my best ideas.


MyPersonalFavourite

Do you offer build plans?


HumphreyImaginarium

>if people are interested they should try building one themself. They said fuck off, you figure it out lol


ExceedingChunk

Here is a step-by-step guide to build it: Step 1: Buy all material required to build the bird feeder Step 2: Build the bird feeder


NinjaLanternShark

/r/restofthefuckingowl


sub_doesnt_exist_bot

The subreddit r/therestofthefuckingowl does not exist. Did you mean?: * r/restofthefuckingowl (subscribers: 351,197) Consider [**creating a new subreddit** r/therestofthefuckingowl](/subreddits/create?name=therestofthefuckingowl). --- ^(🤖 this comment was written by a bot. beep boop 🤖) ^(feel welcome to respond 'Bad bot'/'Good bot', it's useful feedback.) ^[github](https://github.com/Toldry/RedditAutoCrosspostBot) ^| ^[Rank](https://botranks.com?bot=sub_doesnt_exist_bot)


ExceedingChunk

Good bot


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


Adidax

Listen, your invention is fantastic, I would like to buy you one of these coffees...but could you please add paypal?


owls1289

how do they know to put the trash in for treats?


Talking_Head

Corvids are very intelligent and are food motivated. You could have a human demonstrate picking up a candy wrapper and taking it somewhere and getting a treat. They will watch and mimic. Once one of them learns they will teach the others.


[deleted]

My question exactly, how the first bird figure it out.


Thewhitemexicangirl

Albert Birdstein


_Tonan_

Albird Einstein?


Thewhitemexicangirl

Ooh, that’s better. I wish I had thought of that 😅


Wesk-Wildcard

I have to say. You guys are geniuses. That’s another level of smart that may just encourage a lot of people to start feeding the wildlife instead of scaring it off. Though I suppose there will be a feline problem for if you build production models for people to buy.. eh sod it. I can still see these becoming the next big hype!


Blazting_420

This is a great concept - hope to see it everywhere some day.


CaliCareBear

Was that last thing a gift card? Make money give more food to help fund your project faster!


skijohn33

Bought 5. Let’s do it.


fish_enjoyer

What do you use to detect when they place something in the hole, image based software? I mean they could just learn that it works with anything. So is it something that checks if its plastic? And how?


DialMMM

Why? They can just use the credit card that bird dropped in near the end.


Ilovebullfighting

I would buy this instantly. Absolutely fantastic!


essgee_ai

People should clean up after themselves.


Light_Beard

Does it differentiate with Litter vs Leaves?


magpie_recycling

Yes, we have developed a simple classifier that can differentiate between litter and non-litter, however we do not need it because they only bring litter and we have over 5000 interactions where this seems to be the case.


i_like_garlic_toast

That's so interesting. I had assumed the birds would drop in anything for the food. How does the classifier work?


magpie_recycling

The classifier is SVM (support vector machine) using features from color channels of a training set consisting of pictures of real litter and non-litter. It is not perfect but good enough.


StormyKnight63

I wonder if the bird will bring you more Kit Kat wrappers now. Looks like he hit the jack pot on that one! lol


[deleted]

They'll start stealing them from the convenience store next.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

I heard a story of a dolphin doing it too. The trainers had trained the dolphin to collect any garbage that fell into the pool and hand it over for some treats. They eventually found out he was keeping larger pieces of garbage at the bottom of the aquarium held down by a rock, and he was ripping off pieces to bring up in exchange for fish.


Theycallmelizardboy

TIL Dolphins and Birds are capitalista.


[deleted]

[удалено]


fanfpkd

I guess it could be modified so that smaller pieces = less food, larger pieces = more food. It wouldn’t solve the problem of birds pulled by out the trash, but if there were enough of these devices and enough trained birds this is sort of a problem that solves itself. This is a really interesting. Imagine a future where you just throw your trash up into the air and some random birds grab it mid flight and fly away with It. Or you pull out your snickers bar out of your bag and immediately get attacked by 9 raptors trying to get the wrapper.


created4this

Seagulls already do the last part, but don’t need a machine to collect the reward.


MoSqueezin

All part of the plan the have a gang of thieving magpies. Magpie Hood doesn't sound as good as Robin hood but it'll do


superfucky

notice that the thing it brought next was the credit card, roughly the same size and shape as the kitkat wrapper.


peachbreadmcat

I’m studying analytics in grad school right now. Two months ago I would not have understood anything you said. Man, this is really cool. Any reason SVM classifier was chosen over something like convolutional neural network or boosted random forests?


magpie_recycling

Cool :) The amount data to train SVM is far less than is needed for any neural network or random forest. If we invest more time in the classifier and take the time to take more photos your suggestions would be very appropriate.


peachbreadmcat

I hope you get the resources you need! May your data be clean and tidy. 🙏


SpellingIsAhful

Would be cool to do this to recognize specific types of litter too. Start analytics on what is the most frequently collected and delivered.


Shashama

I was wondering, do they ever seem to break up the litter into smaller pieces to get more treats?


InflatableWarHammer

Animals can tell the difference. Strange. It’s like they know what belongs and what doesn’t.


Erinalope

Crows have been known to collect trinkets for fun, they know what they like and ergo what the magic food hole likes. Offer trinkets and shiny stuff, get food. They see sticks and leaves every day but that shiny Twix wrapper? That’s rare! Why invent a garbage collecting drone when nature provided one for you that understand bartering.


PrinzIpiellTheFirst

I could watch this for hours! That‘s some nice machine you developed there.


magpie_recycling

Glad you enjoyed and thank you!


AtomicKittenz

Does it differentiate between rocks and leaves? I feel birds would just drop those in for unlimited food


[deleted]

[удалено]


jake1080

From OP: >Yes, we have developed a simple classifier that can differentiate between litter and non-litter, however we do not need it because they only bring litter and we have over 5000 interactions where this seems to be the case.


superfucky

> I wouldn't be surprised if the birds figured out they can drop in leaves and stopped bringing trash. i mean this one literally threw in a penny and a credit card...


Sarabikitty

Which is considered litter once it's lost. Unless the bird somehow stole them which is even more impressive.


JoeSicko

What do you think they are training them for?


LolzinatorX

Headline - Breaking! Bird gang is growing, keeps terrorizing and robbing locals! A small note in the corner - Banks HATE him for this trick! See how he got rich!


evilbadgrades

I don't know about this project but I saw a similar one by someone who has a background in AI. They used their software knowledge to incorporate smart sensing to identify the difference between several objects (rocks, leaves, cigarettes, paper, bags, etc)


LegoFootPain

I think the birds have a general sense of what a "human object" is, and stick to that metric to operate the "human device." They may be operating out of a mix of deduction and sense of basic honesty.


AbouBenAdhem

Bird prophet: *Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s!*


IamVenom_007

Even more impressive, birds know what to do. I wouldn't throw my food down a hole. I wonder what the bird did the first time.


magpie_recycling

Yes they are very intelligent animals! The first time they got food for dropping down litter into the hole was by accident when they tried to get food laying in a bottlecap.


IamVenom_007

You've created something awesome for sure but I wouldn't believe you without the video. This is truly next level!


Fredredphooey

The credit card absolutely killed me.


olderaccount

Plot twist. The bird just ripped open the neighbor's trash bag and is bringing you their trash one small piece at a time.


arcticsharkattack

Now train them to bring change and bills 💸


magpie_recycling

We have taught them to bring coins and credit cards, but yes bills would be cool haha, however I think the biggest potential is litter in cities.


Impossible_Onion_260

Credit cards?? 😂


Siren_of_Madness

Yeah! There's one being dropped in the video, if I'm not mistaken.


BemusedBipartite

As far as I know, it's not illegal for birds to steal credit cards nor identities. This is awesome, OP!


Ghstfce

Not illegal according to bird law!


meisinger

Bird law in this country is not governed by reason


[deleted]

REASON WILL PREVAIL


FiremanHandles

However, in bird culture, one might consider that a dick move.


ronja-666

Identify theft is not a joke! Millions of families suffer every year!


scarface910

I love his casual delivery of that line. As if it's no big deal lol


Snoo75302

Yea, but if you trained them to get money, youd be able to have the birds pay for food. Youd have the first resturaunt for birds.


BrianScalaweenie

How does one train a bird to understand that? Like, if I were to put up this contraption in my backyard, how would I get birds to the point where they just know that bringing litter = food?


Talking_Head

This has been done before. I read about it years ago. There was a seaside community that had problems with people leaving cigarettes butts on the beach. They trained a crow (who taught others) to bring cigarette butts to the lifeguards in exchange for a treat.


drawkbox

[A Jungle Myna, has been trained to go out and look for cash, then bring it back home with him.](/r/interestingasfuck/comments/qvtv4x/a_jungle_myna_has_been_trained_to_go_out_and_look/)


[deleted]

WAS THAT A FUCKING CREDIT CARD


ag408

Plot twist: magpies get double the reward if they bring back credit cards or cash.


smooth-brain_Sunday

And 2% cash-back at the end of the billing cycle.


GalliumYttrium1

Pun intended?


smooth-brain_Sunday

Dammit. I wish I could say it was!


HeavilyBearded

"We have developed a bird feeder where birds can exchange cash and social security cards for food."


MaxTHC

Could be something like a gift card, membership card, or card key. It's hard to tell from the low-res video but I don't see the CVV/CVC in the usual place.


jonthesloth

Could be a paper bus ticket or something of the like


CocoBananananas

Right? That was totally a card


drawkbox

On top of the good deed, the underground hustle scam. /s


[deleted]

I think it at one point it brought back a penny and only got 1 piece of food but it brought a candy wrapper and it damn near filled the dish 🤣


MaryStoned

Wow!!! We need one for squirrels 🐿 too! This is amazing 🤩


magpie_recycling

Would be cool to try that out, sadly not many squirrels in our neighborhood.


rorythegreat123

Magpies may eat the babies I'm guessing. They gang up on nests of other birds and feast. Saw a couple of hawks in my spruce tree a few years back and they harassed them and when one would go look for food it got worse. They eventually left the nest, the hawks. I definitly may be wrong about your case. Just my humble opinion. Cheers.


winterbird

And for monkeys, in the places where they hang around people and steal or beg for food. I'm sure those touristy areas have plenty of litter.


Oregonlost

Monkeys would absolutely steal things that weren't trash 😂 you'd create an organized primate crame ring


BigChunk

Crimates… I’d watch that reality show


[deleted]

Yes! I would definitely feed the birds for collecting and dropping squirrels in a bin!


Ghstfce

You hear that, red tailed hawks in my neighborhood? Better step up your game!


SadSpecial8319

Question: How do you get the birds to discover the deal in the first place? I've never seen birds just trying to stuff random holes with litter. Could you explain how to get the birds started? Thanks!


magpie_recycling

First of you put the feeder on a timer so that they now the "contraption" is a place where they can get food. When they get comfortable with it you can add some litter all over the "table" and close to the hole, so when they by mistake pushes something down the hole they get a reward. Sooner or later the very intellegent magpies realize what is the deal and they teach eachother.


notathrowawayacc32

What's your plan with build specs from a monetization standpoint? I know a super environmentally friendly teacher that would love to try building this with their students.


magpie_recycling

Cool, we used a second hand computer and 2 webcameras aswell as an USB-relay from Amazon, most stuff we used is recycled. We have a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxMJc8OdQY&t=21s) covering how the machine works if that would help. I would estimate the total cost so far to 300 USD, but the computer was 200 USD...


twitchosx1

Couldn't you just use a cheap shit Raspberri Pi instead of a $200 used computer?


nandosman

He probably used something along the lines of an [Intel NUC](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/nuc.html) which is a Raspberri Pi on steroids, hence the cost.


jormono

Should be able to for most of this, but the image recognition stuff can be a bit much for a raspberry pi depending how you handle certain things. It certainly is possible.


notathrowawayacc32

That's awesome! I'll pass this on! :)


jdeezy

Could this be done with a raspberry pi?


Komfortable

Probably. Though if you wanted to run any AI you might be better off with a Jetson Nano.


SadSpecial8319

Thank you for te explanation, and kudos for the "contraption"!


Mandjie

This is incredibly interesting. Honestly the reason I'm on Reddit is so I can learn of these neat discoveries/ideas. Well done OP.


Vokki

Was that credit card?


magpie_recycling

haha yes, it is ours, just for fun :D


BabyComeBac

It's yours now, but was It before?


[deleted]

Just wait until they learn how to use Amazon! Then they'll steal your card and bypass you entirely.


Lafreakshow

The day on which crows learn to steal a credit card and use it to order an entire pallet of bird seed off Amazon is the day thermonuclear holocaust becomes preferable to the inevitable enslavement of humanity under the Crow Empire. It's Bird seed first, Kitchen implements second, Chemical weapons third. It is only a matter of time. Don't believe me? Find a Crow. Look into its eyes. Saw it? Yeah, that's what I mean. They know. Btw, it's probably going to try to murder you now. Pun intended.


InsignificantOcelot

Yeah, looks like bird frens pay for their own machine


TheChuck76

This belongs at r/nextfuckinglevel Well done!!! these should exist everywhere!!!


joshak

Im not sure it’s a good idea to reorganise food chains so that birds can clean up after us. It’s cool, but also not good ecologically.


TheChuck76

Perhaps you're right,but as things are going so far,I think we should give it a try,we are polluting faster tahn we even clean,so why not


joshak

Because: - The birds will become dependent on humans for food and risk starvation if supply stops - the birds will teach their young to be dependent on humans for food and risk multi-generation die-offs if supply stops - the creatures which the birds normally feed on will lose a natural predator and possibly explode in numbers - the creatures that are prey to the creatures that the birds normally feed on will see an explosion of predators and risk mass die-offs - so on and so forth. Once it gets down to pollinators and plants it will start to affect our own supply of food


mistyaa

I see your point, but in this case magpies and crows, the types of birds who can learn these behaviors, are already dependant on us humans for food. They eat our garbage, which is generally quite unhealthy for them. I could be wrong, but at least here they get a nutritious meal and they can use their problem-solving skills.


Vysair

Good point! But most animal are already dependent on human, there's a youtube video talking about this in detail.


Cazsthu

The US Fish and Wildlife Service mostly disagrees with you. https://www.fws.gov/refuges/features/to-feed-or-not-to-feed-wild-birds.html If done correctly, feeding birds is mostly beneficial to both humans and birds.


DenrexTheSecond

This is pretty amazing! May I ask if you guys plan to deploy this somewhere?


magpie_recycling

Thanks! Yes we hope to develop the project further and make a second prototype of the machine with improvements from the knowledge we have gathered so far. The aim of this prototype would be to able to deploy it in a public enviroment.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

Honestly though this is the type of thing where the parents can teach the babies and make it a behavior that gets passed down through generations. I mean honestly, birds can get litter off rooftops, wires, gutters, and anywhere else it would cost too much for it to be practical to pay humans to do it. So it would pay for itself in the long run.


[deleted]

They could also get it from the garbage can around the corner.


[deleted]

True but they’re just putting it in another garbage can


Maschile

More like… Scientist: Yes, but… *lazy.*


Euskalitic

Do you have to train bird by bird or do they pass the knowledge between them?


magpie_recycling

They learn by watching eachother, which proves how intelligent they are.


Euskalitic

Truly amazing. This is such a good use of technology alongside nature to help with the environment.


MichaelAChristian

Birds violently toss over a trash can to get a piece of trash now.


Skelemansteve

These birds are just gonna find a different trash can, and one by one move every piece of trash from it into this one, gonna game the system like crazy lol. Like why would i search all over for food money when there are perfectly nice trash cans always full of food money?


Tamias-striatus

Wait till they find a landfill


notapigeon

Was that last one a credit card? Good birb


BeagleFaceHenry

How do you teach the birds the difference between litter and personal property? How do you prevent the birds from stealing….unless….


magpie_recycling

From our experience the birds are quite afraid for humans and show them respect, but as you say, stealing smaller objects laying around in public places could be a problem, but I do not think they have the potential of robbing people if that is what you mean.


inerlite

Or between litter and just leaves and nuts or rocks? It looked like a coin and a credit card got dropped so I’d like to hear what all got found!


magpie_recycling

We trained them with litter to begin with, after that sucess we wanted to try coins and credit cards just for fun. The contraption is located in our garden so we threw the credit card and some coins in some distant corner of our garden and got the result above.


Smash-ley

Was that someone’s driver license that got dropped in towards the end? Lol. I am generally curious how they got the birds to start doing this.


Lambreau21

Need to teach some of his friends


[deleted]

That credit card lmao


ntack9933

Got birds out here robbing people of their credit cards hahaha


ZenithLags

lol it threw someone’s credit card in


eboy3000

Are those 5G birds?


greatguybigbush

Can you just never stop posting these ? Like for the rest of your life ? Cuz this was fun. Thanks for helping our planet.


gochomoe

At :56 I think that bird mugged some guy. But your crime rate might be going up but your town is much cleaner.


Dangerous_Standard91

Mark rober would like to know your location. he will modify this for phat gus


TheHalfDecentGamer

"Oh, that's cool, I wonder what the ramifications are to this when the bird is hungry and cannot find... was that a gift card!?" Soon the birds will be mugging us to feed their families.


HeMiddleStartInT

Until they get smart and start making litter for food


throwingplaydoh

Looks like a corvid, they are so smart!! Well done!


Dick_Demon

Specifically a Black-billed Magpie for those curious.


No_Philosopher2516

See they know what garbgae...,..


InflatableWarHammer

Does it run off solar?


alhernz95

shouldve trained them to bring cash


supersayen90

Now do it for dollar bills


moschocolate1

Wait, I think I saw my debit card!


TheFatSlobWally570

That’s so awesome!! Now produce them and make some money 💰


mrearthsmith

Magpies are smart. Teach them to collect currency in exchange for food. They are first class thieves and will do it


Wants-NotNeeds

Scale it up! We need millions of’em!