Bizarre new anti-litter drive will see CROWS trained to pick up cigarette butts

The birds, which were chosen for their capacity to be taught such a skill, will be trained to pick up litter and discarded items through a feeding system. The birds will be rewarded with food dispensed from a special machine when they place litter from Swedish streets in Södertälje, a city south-west of Stockholm.

The machine can distinguish between different types of objects, noting what is litter and what is material from nature, such as leaves.

The project was launched by the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, with founder Christian Günther-Hanssen insisting the birds were “taking part on a voluntary basis”.

Known as “Corvid Cleaning”, those involved are hoping the crows will help keep the costs of cleaning the city’s streets down.

Mr Günther-Hanssen predicts the pilot project could save the city around 75 percent of its current street cleaning costs, which amount to around £1.6m each year.

He told Swedish news agency TT: “They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other.

“At the same time, there’s a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish.”

Research into New Caledonian crows has suggested they have a similar reasoning level to human seven-year-olds.

The trial in Södertälje will be a test of the programme’s effectiveness, determining whether it will be rolled out more widely.

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The trial is not completely unheard of – in 2018, a group of crows were trained under a similar regime in France.

They picked up and dropped off litter around the Puy di Fou theme park in western France, near the city of Nantes in 2018.

Nicolas de Villiers, the resort’s president, commented at the time although guests were on the whole respectful, there were lessons to be learned from the birds.

He said: “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.”