Thread by @corvidresearch

My goodness, white-necked ravens are really having their time in the spotlight this week! So let’s dive in: could this raven really be recycling?

No. It’s not reasonable to assume any non-human animal possess a concept of garbage, recycling and the desperate need for humans to get their shit together. So what are the alternative explanations?

There has been one case where you could have convinced me it was an accident. I wrote about that one on my blog. corvidresearch.blog/2015/06/19/mee…

Folks saw the hooded crow snacking from a paper plate and then fly over and drop it in the bin. Given that crows often perch to eat and then drop the inedibles on the ground, it’s conceivable that’s what happened here only with the awesome coincidence that it was perched on a bin

Our video in question though was no accident. Given the difficulty & number of times the bird had to try to get it right, it was doing this intentionally. You can also see that it flies off IMMEDIATELY after it correctly completes the action. It’s flying to a handler. No question

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.

But it’s also been done before. You may remember the captive rooks that were trained to pick up trash and were then able to successfully do so at the French theme park Puy du Fou. smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fre…

Finally, the fact that this is a white necked-ravens means I’d be willing to put money on this particular raven being Mischief, yes the same bird as the now infamous bird/bunny video! time.com/5657404/bird-o…

Mischief is trained by handler Paige Davis at the World Bird Sanctuary. Paige runs a wildly popular IG and YouTube account where many of these videos originate.

I couldn’t find this specific video, but I did find this.

So from my perspective this case of the recycling corvid is closed. But I’d welcome being proved wrong. How interesting that would be!

UPDATE: the World Bird Sanctuary has confirmed it is Mischief!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE. Apparently the reporter I spoke with this morning gave me bad intel. It seems this bird might not be Mischief but in fact a WNRA named Kendi at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I’m looking into it now.

Ok. I haven’t gotten the 100% confirmation BUT I did speak to the same woman at WBS as the reporter, and she said that when she told the reporter it was Mischief it’s because she thought he was referring to this video which WBS happened to post to fb today

So given the aesthetic of the background and the fact she was unfamiliar with this video I think we can safely say it’s Kendi at Animal Kingdom. Which means there’s not one but two recycling white-necked ravens! How cool!!!!