Right now the crowbox site is in Beta until we can raise the $2,500 needed for an updated, easy-to-make version complete with a how-to that anyone can use. Please feel free to comment, review the raw files, or donate!

This site began with a 2008 crowbox experiment, which turned nature’s pests into practical players in society by autonomously training crows to conduct mutually beneficial behaviours with humans.

I did the initial experiment in 2008 in an attempt to teach crows how to live more purposefully for man, so that man would not annihilate the species.

At the time, I taught some captive crows, remotely, through basic operant conditioning, to feed coins into a vending machine so they could get peanuts. The idea is that a group of wild crows would teach other crows, including their offspring, to find the coins and put them into the vending machine to get peanuts. For this experiment, I received coverage all over the globe – from the New York Times, TED.com, Gizmodo and even Oprah covered the experiment!

But now – it’s your turn. The crowbox experiment is open source and this site exists to let the whole world know how to make a crow machine and then share the results.

Download the files, post some questions in the comments, add a page or three to the wiki. The open source crowbox experiment is still in beta, but together we can build it into something great.

Read about how the crowbox works, and see the story of how this whole thing began (below)!