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Puy du Fou, one of the largest theme parks in France, recently announced a new system for keeping its grounds clean. To supplement its human cleaning staff, the park has trained six rooks, which are highly intelligent birds in the crow family, to pick up cigarette butts and other litter around the park.
Before putting rooks on cleanup duty, the theme park already used them as part of its falconry show. (Which we would NEVER Support in the first place. Animals are not entertainment.) The smart birds are responsible for scooping up roses and bringing them to the princess in the show. Since the rooks have been successfully trained to make deliveries in this attraction, Puy du Fou falconer Christophe Gaborit figured, why not teach them to pick up trash, too?
While it’s pretty amazing that these birds are able to efficiently gather up litter and put it in a specific place, the simple reality is that we shouldn’t be relying on them to do so. Puy du Fou President Nicolas de Villiers clearly recognizes this, as he reportedly told NPR, “The purpose of the crows … is to educate the people, to open their minds, to think, ‘OK, the birds are able to do something that we are much more able to do than them, so we should do this by ourselves.'”
Indeed, we should be responsible for disposing of our own trash in the proper receptacles — not throwing it on the ground — and it seems a bit unnecessary for us to be outsourcing this simple task to animals. Has humanity really gotten to the point where we need birds to do our dirty work in order to open our eyes and show us how insanely easy it is to not litter? The whole concept seems a bit outlandish to us.
After all, trash cans are readily available in the modern world, and it takes all but two seconds to throw away a piece of trash or a cigarette butt. So why can’t we step up to the plate and take responsibility for throwing things out once we’re done with them so that litter isn’t a thing in the first place?!
Unfortunately, not everyone seems to get that, as evidenced by the huge amount of trash that pollutes our Earth’s oceans and land. If you agree that littering is gross and would like to help make a change so that we don’t have to take silly measures such as getting birds to pick up our trash, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!
Image Source: Pixabay
I see this as no different then training other animals to do human duties. Humans should deal with their own burdens not place it on non-humans. We cause them enough problems.
When people at the theme park see the birds picking up the trash and throwing it away they are going to throw more trash on the ground to see this more. There will always be some people that throw their trash on the ground at a place like this. That is why every other theme park has humans they pay to clean it up. Stop being cheap and pay to clean your theme park.