Crows and Society

Crows are everywhere. Huddled on rooftops, perched on telephone lines, or glaring down at you sinisterly from a lamp post, crows have become a ubiquitous sight around the world (indigenous to all areas other than the Arctic and the southern tip of South America).To most people they are thought of as pests, rooting through your garbage or laying droppings on your shiny car, and it can often seem like a tempting idea to simply be rid of all of them. Joshua Klein has a different solution to the problem, and through it demonstrates an important approach to problem solving that can often be overlooked.

Almost a decade ago Klein was at a cocktail party chatting with a friend when this person began to complain about the crows that would gather outside their apartment. They had been gathering in his yard, making a large mess, and he thought that the best solution would be simply to eradicate them. Klein disagreed. He believed that what would truly be beneficial would be to train the birds to do something useful.

Crows are extremely intelligent creatures. They have been known to recognize faces, utilize water displacement, and even learn from one another. So what Klein did was capitalize off both the birds high population and level of intelligence. What Klein did was teach the birds how to operate a vending machine that he created specifically for them, dispensing peanuts when a crow would drop pennies into the machine. Now while this is not exactly the most useful way of utilizing the birds, or a great way to make money, it does display an important idea; crows can be made useful.

This is a great example of working around a fallacy in problem solving that can often trap us not only as people, but as a culture. The idea being employed here is that of assimilation versus eradication, thinking that rather than just trying to get rid of a nuisance it is more beneficial to actually attempt to spin it around and make it useful. Where the problem arises for most people having to make this choice is the patience involved. It took Klein several years to even get anywhere near to making any progress on this project, and it still to this day has only procured an idea rather than a real solution.

While this may be a difficult and time-consuming way of dealing with things in the end there is much that can be gained from it. To make a historical reference, think of the purge of the Native Americans from North America, all the people and culture lost because an agreement could not be made. Even now this idea could benefit such modern issues as illegal Mexican immigration, finding ways to assimilate them into our nation rather than fight the losing battle of trying to reject them.

It is important to remember that by simply eliminating a problem you run the risk of losing any potential gain that could of been made. Although assimilation is not always the correct way to to deal with a situation it is always something worth good consideration. Through remembering to do so we can hope to make better changes to our world.