Crows help clean a French theme park by picking up trash.

Amazing Crows at Theme Park are Trained to Pick Up Trash

There are many intelligent animals that can be easily trained. And one of them is birds. Owners teach them to talk, sing, dance, count, imitate sounds and they can even do chores!

In France, there are incredible six crows who were trained by a theme park to collect and discard cigarette butts and other bits of trash.

This Rook is a thrash collector.

These birds are called Rooks — a type of bird in the crow family that is native in Europe and parts of Scandinavia and Asia. 

They started early this month picking up litter at Puy du Fou, a park that features period villages and gardens, as well as historic re-enactments, performances, and events.

Puy du Fou theme park in France.

The avian trash collectors were raised in captivity and trained by Christophe Gaborit - a falconer and project manager.

Gaborit was inspired to recruit the rooks (Corvus frugilegus) by something he saw 20 years ago: a group of wild ravens sifting through natural litter in a field.

Christophe Gaborit, trains the Rooks at Puy du Fou theme park.

He raised and trained his first pair of trash-collecting rooks in 2000, with a little help from a special cabinet. It works when the birds deposited trash in the drawer, a second compartment would be opened to reward them with a tasty treat.

Repeating this action led the rooks to associate rubbish removal with food, though they would sometimes try to trick their trainer by dropping bits of wood in the box, Gaborit said.

Crow puts thrash in a box in exchange of food.

While a winged cleanup crew may not be the most efficient method for keeping a large park litter-free, the sight of the busy rooks will hopefully teach visitors to be more careful about where they dispose of their trash and learn from these helpful fellas.

“Nothing is unreal as long as you can imagine like a crow.”

- Munia Khan