Pest Control: The Birds and the Bees
A Boing Boing post links to a National Geographic article about honeybees used in Tokyo to protect seabirds (terns) from attack by crows. A related NatGeo story tells of a gun club hunting crows at a city’s request.
Wizard Saruman isn’t going to like this.
A commenter on another site said “crows are the new dogs” after watching a widely blogged TED talk by Joshua Klein on how he taught crows to find coins and put them in special vending machines. Crows will remember specific people for years and can make tools to obtain treats. Their brain to body ratio is the same as chimpanzees.
Perhaps they could be trained to search for lost people and somehow signal their location, just like in Lord of the Rings.
Might cockroaches, rats, mosquitos, fleas, and/or locusts also be employed for human benefit?
[Update: Boing Boing reports crows stealing coins from a car wash.]
