Teaching Lesson

Last summer, while on a break at work, I went for a walk. I work at a large university and there are often conferences and other groups that meet during the summer. On this day, there was a fair amount of garbage and between the crows, eastern grey squirrels and resident rats, much of that garbage had been picked through and strewn across the pavement. Two crows were checking out a mostly empty soda cup, lid still attached, lying on it's side. Some of the liquid had spilled out, and they were trying to drink it by turning their heads so that their beaks were sideways along the soda spill. The one I will call the older, more experienced one, waddled away to the grass. The younger, curious one, tried pecking at the hole in the lid, but of course couldn't get any soda out of it as the cup was almost empty and on it's side, so the liquid was sitting far below the lid opening. It would try this a few times with no luck and then the "older" crow would walk over, pick up the bottom end of the cup in it's beak, flip the cup upside down so that the soda would spill out onto the pavement, and then drop the cup back down on it's side. The two crows would drink up the liquid, and the "younger" crow would try again pecking at the lid, the "older" crow would come back over to tip the cup over, spill the liquid...this went for several rounds. I can't actually remember if the "younger" crow figured it out, but it seemed like an obvious teaching lesson as the older crow wasn't all that interested in the cup (walked away repeatedly) yet stayed near enough to try to show the other crow the ropes. It's interesting how animals adapt to the human environment.