No one thinks much about crows as their oily black feathers rustle on by. But have you thought about them being some of the military’s most important spies? The military has been training crows to be sent out as spies. They are not only the smartest bird on the earth, but no one thinks much about them. When Lucy Alley, a local bird expert in Bar Harbor, was told about the birds she said, “Crows are one of the smartest birds. They are known for their ability to learn to speak and play games,”
The government is putting tiny cameras on the crows. They call them crow cameras. These cameras provide knowledge that the military could use to learn about their enemies. The cameras could be good, but they are also creepy. Barney Mills, a leader of a neighborhood watch team in Bangor, said, “I don’t have a problem with the military training the crows. It’s the cameras I’m worried about.” This brings up another side to the new crow trainees. Could the cameras be used for something other than military uses? But we should think about what good birds have been used for in the past.
Many birds in the past have been used to carry messages. This is similar to when the military trained pigeons to carry important messages back and forth across the battlefield. This was not carried out very long: the birds most of the time didn’t make it back.
You see crows everywhere all the time. You never think twice about the crow in your backyard. Or in your neighbor’s yard, or even in the middle of the road. What about after being told that the government was training crows to be spies? These innocent birds are smarter than you think. More useful, too.
