> Mollaret seemed to think that, because crows are smart, their behavior should be predictable and programmable—even if his own behavior wasn’t. He was treating ecology like a subset of mechanics, as though the crows themselves could be turned into cogs in a machine.

In particular it's hard to get a crow to do tedious, boring chores for some almonds or whatever when they know there's relatively fresh pizza in a dumpster 2 blocks down the street.