That's How It Happened

Phrase of the day: "mutually beneficial synanthropy". Joshua Klein has designed a machine that vends peanuts to crows that deposit coins in it:

"So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other.
Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue."

My initial suggestions for expanding the program would be machines that reward wild boar for finding truffles, and pay dolphins for retrieving abalone.