In Sweden they have trained wild crows to trade cigarette butts for peanuts, helping to clean up Swedish streets.
A special vending machine was created to see whether crows are smart enough to use it. They are.
In a village in India, an Indian robin had made a nest and laid her eggs on the village’s switchboard. The village decided to go without street lights for over a month for the safety of the bird and to allow her eggs to hatch. After 45 days, the bird and its hatchlings safely flew away.
Researchers taught African grey parrots to buy food using tokens. They were then paired up, one parrot given ten tokens and the other none. Without any incentive for sharing, parrots with tokens started to give some to their broke partners so that everyone could eat.
Eugene Schieffelin hoped to introduce into North America every bird mentioned by Shakespeare. He imported starlings from England and released them in Manhattan in 1890 and 1891. Starlings soon started to drive native birds out of their habitats, ate massive amounts of crops, and spread disease.
The Chinese Army has been training 10,000 pigeons to provide support to the military’s communications in the event that war renders its modern technology unusable. The pigeons, flying at speeds of up to 75 miles (120 km) per hour, are being trained to carry loads of up to 3.5 oz (100 g).
Research finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals.
In the late 1980s a gosling was born in Harvard, Nebraska. Although this is a relatively common occurrence, this little hatchling was different, as he was born with stumps for feet. A local inventor named Gene Fleming heard of this and fitted the goose named Andy with specially made Nike baby shoes. Andy gained fame as a role model for disabled children and Nike provided him with a lifetime supply of shoes.
According to Maori legend New Zealanders were prey to giant eagles; Haast Eagles, which could catch prey up to 510 lbs and had a wingspan up to 9.8 ft, went extinct around 1400.
Alex was a grey parrot with a vocabulary of over 100 words, the ability to identify over 50 different objects, and the ability to count quantities up to 6. Before he died in 2007, his last words were “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”