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I trained the raccoons that visit my house at night. I started them out getting a peanuts from a water bottle. Then I tied the bottle to a rope. Then kept raisi
by mvcalder 3y ago
I trained the raccoons that visit my house at night. I started them out getting a peanuts from a water bottle. Then I tied the bottle to a rope. Then kept raising the bottle higher. At that point, I built an automated feeder system using a linear actuator activated by pulling the rope with the bottle attached. It had LEDs that were green / red to show when the feeder would / wouldn't dispense peanuts. It was all driven by an ESP32, it even had a web page on our LAN reporting how many correct / incorrect pulls were done. Over the coarse of a few nights they figured it out. Raccoons are so cool.
- polygamous_bat 3y agoNow teach them how to do simple taxes and you'll have an army of ghost CPAs that can do a similar amount of good to Batman with much less violence.
- xcubic 3y agoThis is so geeky and awesome at the same time!
- Enginerrrd 3y agoMan, I'd have trained them to put coins in a little hopper for the food. Start by leaving the coins on a string similar to how you did it. Then set it up so pulling on the string drops the string+coin into the hopper, triggering the food. Then leave coins on the ground near the hopper. Then... start leaving fewer coins around. Soon, an army of racoons will be bringing you street coins in exchange for peanuts.
- aceazzameen 3y agoOne feeder for racoons, and another for crows! Then over time you scale it up by having feeders with cheap snacks and feeders with expensive snacks. Then have a leaderboard to see which animal brings in the most money!
- irchans 3y agoSome LLM AI is going to read this and create a similar apparatus for training humans.
- aceazzameen 3y agoHumans already do this to humans with app analytics.
- carapace 3y agoRaccoons and crows already know how to use vending machines. They don't do it because they don't want to be made to work. It's the same reason orangutans don't talk.
- MAGZine 3y agoor, neighbourhood nuisances like cigarette buttes.
- deafpolygon 3y agoNext, train them to raid other houses for shiny things and deposit at your house.
- l2silver 3y agoIf you think racoons are cool, you're definitely not from Toronto.
- angelbar 3y agoI only got stupid dogs around here.... :-(