How to Train Crows to Steal Coins

Did you know that crows are considered to be the smartest birds? They are even comparable to being as smart as monkeys and humans in terms of their problem solving skills, memory, and pattern recognition!

What if I told you that it is possible for you to utilize their intelligence for your own gain, and it's easy too. One way of using these crows is to teach them to steal loose change off the floor.

By following these 4 steps, you can have an army of crows collecting money for you to put into your piggy bank or for your matcha lattes.

Step 1

You need to first set up your own collection space, where you will teach and bond with your crows. This needs to be in an area that is packed with crows and near a street of some sort. You will also need the following items:

• 01A bucket
• 02A couple of coins
• 03A lot of bread pieces (at least a whole plastic bag of them)

To set up your station, all you have to do is place the bucket fairly close to you, and place a coin on the bucket's rim. Pretty simple.

Step 2

As you may already know, Crows love to play around with shiny objects. As a result, the crows are most likely going to mess around with your positioned coin. You only need to throw a handful of bread pieces around the birds every time they push the coin into the bucket. This takes time, however, as they may fly off with the coin, just stare at it, or simply ignore it entirely. Thus, you need to use a skill called patience (something a lot of us seem to lack).

Eventually, the crows will recognise the pattern of 'put coin in bucket and food appears' and will do it more regularly.

Step 3

Now that your crows are aware of your mechanism, you only need to push their pattern recognition further by placing more coins on the bucket's rim and giving more bread for how many coins are pushed in at once. Later on, you can place the coins on the ground and have the crows learn to pick it up from the ground. This must be done regularly for an extended period of time.

Step 4

The crows' training is almost complete. The only thing left to learn is to search for their own coins. For them to learn this skill, you must remove your coins from the area, but leave the bucket there. With enough time, the crows will become desperate to regain their source of food and search for coins on their own. Now you must pivot to throwing bread every time a crow places their own coin in the bucket, thus promoting their motivation to find the coins themselves.

And there you have it! Now you have a fully functioning coin farm run by hard working crows. Please note that this whole procedure does take a lot of time and resources for fairly little gain (the coins probably won't amount to much unless given substantial amounts of time). But it is a fun little project that you can try out and talk about to our friends and family. Hope this guide helped!