5 ms·

A billion butts? Do 10M Swedes really average 100 butts chucked into the environment? Great idea though if it works, win-win for crows and people. Maybe we'll

• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Wouldn't be that clever. They only have one beak per bird, so travelling longer distances isn't worth the effort, or you'd have to pay them with more food. Crows can make these decisions and might decide there are easier ways to get food.
  • Markoff 5y ago
    It depends, if they could swallow them and then vomit on purpose then their capacity would be significantly increased over one beak capacity.
    • bayesian_horse 5y ago
      Birds can't do that. Also they'd get nicotine poisoning. That would be a risk even if they used their goiter. And it would taste terrible.
      • Markoff 5y ago
        Do they even have taste buds which would taste the difference. From what i know birds can't taste spiciness, so they can eat whatever habanero you give them.
        • bayesian_horse 5y ago
          Every animal has some sense of taste and smell. It's the first brain nerve in vertebrates.
• shawabawa3 5y ago
  > A billion butts? Do 10M Swedes really average 100 butts chucked into the environment? it's per year. Roughly 10% of swedes smoke to some level. If we say half of them are only occasional smokers and the other half smoke on average 10/day, that's 1.8B/year
  • ginko 5y ago
    But surely Swedish smokers don't chuck 55% of their butts into the environment.
    • grenoire 5y ago
      You'd be surprised, have you ever been to Paris? Swede smokers are barely any different.
      • lillecarl 5y ago
        There are cultural differences, I put my smokes out and bin them, most people I know do too. Bin density is great in Sweden too, which definitely has an effect on how many butts are put into the environment.
        • null_object 5y ago
          > There are cultural differences, I put my smokes out and bin them There always has to be a Swede saying stuff like this. Living in Stockholm I see THOUSANDS of cigarette butts lying around on the ground, all the time. Reminds me of when I was walking a local street behind some Swedes and an Englishman (some sort of business group) and the English guy stepped in some dogshit and all the Swedes were like "Oh you're so unlucky because EVERYONE in Sweden picks up their dog-dirt" To my eternal shame I didn't say anything. This street me and the kids call Bajslagsgatan (street is really called Roslagsgatan) - the approximate translation for our nickname would be DogShit Street.
          • lillecarl 5y ago
• anfogoat 5y ago
  > ... win-win for crows and people. Until after conditioning generations of swedish crows to rely on this the company gets acquired, humans die off, or the robots get shelved for some other reason. They're going to suffer the fate of Google Reader users.
  • vintermann 5y ago
    In other words, be inconvenienced and get by with other methods? Seriously though, there's a winter flock of crows near where I live, and I wonder how they find enough to eat. There are thousands of them. But clearly they get by, and have enough energy to fly around a lot and have huge, noisy parliamentary debates.
    • colechristensen 5y ago
      People assume that the environment is much more sterile and empty in the winter than it really is.
• onion2k 5y ago
  A billion butts? Do 10M Swedes really average 100 butts chucked into the environment? I've known a few smokers who get through 40+ cigarettes a day. That's almost 15,000 a year from one person. Obviously they're not throwing all those butts on the ground, but it's certainly believable that a huge number make it into the environment.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  I normally think of Swedes and snus, not cigarettes.