A research team led by Hiroyoshi Higuchi, a professor of biological conservation at the University of Tokyo, has discovered that crows have the ability to see into transparent garbage bags when they scavenge for food.
It is already known that crows use their eyes when hunting for food, but the team believes it has systematically verified that crows are capable of processing visual stimuli. The group presented the results of the research to the Ornithological Society of Japan at a recent meeting in Tokyo.
The team placed meat at different times into one of three garbage bags -- transparent, semitransparent and opaque -- and observed how some 10 crows on a 2-meter perch in a large cage looked for the food, repeating the test about 80 times.