clipped from: www.boingboing.net   
Joshua Klein's TED presentation about how he taught crows to drop coins into a peanut vending machine of his own design was my favorite talk at the conference.
Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

Joshua Klein will hack anything that moves -- his list includes "social systems, computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware and animal behavior." His latest project, though charmingly low-tech, has amazing implications for the human-animal interface.

"Klein envisions a new symbiotic relationship between these intelligent birds and the humans that encroach on their habitat. ... Why not turn a longstanding rivalry between man and crow into something that profits both species?"