When an Amsterdam-based startup announced last year that it was training crows to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for food, the concept seemed a little ridiculous, but not because crows aren’t smart enough to pull it off. Corvids are among the most intelligent animals in the world, routinely shocking scientists with their reasoning skills, and they’re already known for snatching cigarettes right out of people’s hands. It’s the concept of training animals to clean up our messes that has many people shaking their heads, though it’s arguably a symbiotic transaction.

As it turns out, we don’t even have to wait for the results of the Crowded Cities experiment, which uses a ‘crow vending machine’ to reward the birds for collecting and depositing cigarette butts. A French theme park called Puy du Fou began its own crow cleanup crew project, employing six birds to pick up butts and other bits of rubbish and insert them into a small box.

“The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean,” says Nicolas de Villiers, head of the park. It’s also about proving “that nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment.”

The crows received their training from the park’s “Academy of Falconry,” and the pickup project is inspired by the park’s falconry show, in which crows retrieve roses and deliver them to a “princess” in a castle. The falconer keeps an eye on the situation to make sure tourists don’t drop trash just for the crows to retrieve, and keeps the birds from cheating by dropping objects other than trash into the box.

Top image: Steve Baker via Flickr CC by 2.0

You can buy all kinds of weird things from vending machines these days – from live crabs to blue jeans to gold bars – but this new iteration is more entertaining than most, and it’ll certainly keep you busy longer than a bag of Skittles. Peruse the covers of a curated selection of books through the glass of these BooksActually vending machines in Singapore for a new distraction on demand. If only this idea caught on everywhere, maybe we’d spend a bit less time standing around staring at our phones.

Two of the machines are now ready for reading enthusiasts in high-traffic areas, including the National Museum of Singapore and the Singapore Visitor Center. Fittingly for these locations, the selections appear to be Singapore-centric, including books by local authors as well as helpful guides for tourists. Each machine contains about 150 books with up to 22 titles, and the outsides of the machines are painted by local artists to indicate what’s inside.

“The whole idea is about accessibility and eyeballs,” says Kenny Leck, owner of BooksActually. “There are not enough bookstores in Singapore… these vending machines could be a visual touchpoint. You may not buy [a book] but we’ll let you know these exist. And from there, there could be more possibilities. We start with visual awareness: books where you see a local author’s name. The ultimate place we want to put them are at train stations.”

Of course, book vending machines aren’t entirely new, though they’re far more popular in Asia than they are stateside. The first book-dispensing machine, called the Penguincubator, was installed in London way back in 1937. An Irish company called ‘A Novel Idea’ installed a machine at London’s Heathrow airport, but went out of business. It’s kind of hard to pick out a book when you can’t even read the back cover, but the concept could work with highly recognizable beach-read-type titles that are about the equivalent of junk food for your brain, anyway.

Dispose of your empty plastic bottle in this little sidewalk kiosk, and it’ll dispense enough food to feed a stray cat or dog. Aiming to help both the environment and homeless animals, the vending machine by Turkish company Pugedon operates at no cost to the city since the value of the plastic pays for the food.

Referred to by the company as ‘ecological life support,’ the vending machine is an answer to a pressing problem in Istanbul: around 150,000 stray cats and dogs. Anyone passing by with a little bottled water can also choose to empty the rest of their water into the machine for the animals.

These animals generally rely on the kindness of local residents to survive, and while some love having them around, others believe they’re dangerous and a source of disease. The locals who host Facebook campaigns to gather supplies to care for the animals are countered by attempts to poison them.

While this vending machine isn’t an answer to the problem of homeless animals, it does offer an interesting compromise to care for them without putting a burden on Istanbul residents or the city.

If you could have a vending machine spit out a small object in any shape you could dream up, what would it be? The DreamVendor, an interactive 3D printing station for Virginia Tech students, is envisioned as “a vending machine with an infinite inventory” that’s only limited by the imaginations of those who put it to work.

Created to enable students to quickly fabricate prototypes for academic and personal design projects, the machine reads CAD files from the user’s SD card, prints the three-dimensional part desired, and dispenses it into a bin when it’s done. The prototype machine is located on the Virginia Tech campus, but soon, new DreamVendors could pop up in retail centers for use by the general public.

Anyone who walks up to a DreamVendor kiosk – located inside a store, likely beside photo booths and soda machines – can choose to either load their own CAD designs into the system, or choose a pre-designed item to print. Plans are still in the developmental stage, but production is expected to begin next year.

3D printing pop-up shops have already begun to appear around the world, from a Baltimore studio that will help you create personalized products to a Japanese cafe that will scan your face and turn it into an edible chocolate treat.

Forget crackers and candy bars – you could be buying live lobsters, bike parts, whole heads of lettuce and even freshly baked baguettes with the push of a button from vending machines across the world. In fact, if you’re willing to blow into a breathalyzer and show your ID to a camera, you can even get a bottle of wine. These 18 vending machines take instant gratification to surprising extremes.

Anger Release: Break a Plate

Few things are more satisfying when you’re feeling livid than smashing a fragile object to smithereens. This vending machine caters to anyone who needs to release some anger , offering your choice of statues, vases, plates and glasses in highly breakable materials – though you won’t get to break it yourself. The satisfaction comes from watching the item fall into the bottom of the machine.

Live Crabs & Lobster

Vending machines aren’t exactly the most humane places for live animals to live, but that doesn’t stop people from offering both lobsters and crabs that you can either take home and kill yourself or have cooked at a restaurant. ‘Lobster Zone’ is actually an arcade game where you have to manipulate a mechanical claw to pluck a live lobster from the bottom of the tank. The slogan is ‘You catch ’em, we cook ’em!’ In China, vending machines offer Shanghai Hairy Crabs in a range of sizes for $1.50 to $7.50

Bikes & Bike Parts

The Bike Dispenser will spit out a dorky looking bicycle in exchange for your cash. While it’s just a concept, the idea is that you can either bring the bike back to the original vending machine location when you’re done, or ride it one-way to another machine. The bikes are fitted with RFID chips to keep track of them.  In New York, cyclists can find another bike-related vending machine that’s actually pretty handy: Bikestock offers bike parts, tools and locks as well as food and a quick tire fill-up.

Blue Jeans & Socks

Let’s say you’ve landed at the airport in a strange city after a red-eye flight only to find that the airline lost your luggage. You might be happy to see vending machines filled with blue jeans and socks. The brand ‘Closed Jeans’ has installed vending machines in train stations across Europe. Sock vending machines offer everything from colorful, stylish options to the most basic white athletic socks. The latter can sometimes be found in bowling alleys.

Hot Pizza, Mashed Potatoes & Chicken

If you’ve ever stared at the sad, cold offerings in a vending machine, wishing you could have some hot pizza instead, you might be in luck (if you can actually find one of these.) Pizza vending machines have been common in Asia for a while, and are now popping up in the U.S. thanks to Wonder Pizza USA, which offers steaming nine-inch whole pizzas in two minutes. If you prefer to mainline your refined carbs, hoover up some instant mashed potatoes and gravy at your local 7-Eleven courtesy of Maggi’s gross mashed potato machines. Other hot foods that can be procured disturbingly quickly with the push of a button include french fries, hot dogs, fried chicken and even squid.

Eggs & Fresh Lettuce

Lettuce doesn’t seem like an ideal item for a vending machine, considering its tendency to wilt pretty quickly. But this particular machine takes care of that problem by actually growing the lettuce on sponges under fluorescent lighting. Chef’s Farm, found in Japan, can produce 60 heads of lettuce per day. In rural Japan, where convenience stores are hard to come by, it’s not uncommon to find vending machines offering cartons of eggs.

Fresh Bread in Paris

Need a freshly-baked baguette at three in the morning? If you’re in Paris, you’re in luck (for a number of reasons). A baker decided to take advantage of the August holiday season, when most bakeries close up shop, by offering a 24-hour baguette vending machine filled with partially cooked loaves that are finished off just when you need them. The baker, who lives above his shop, came up with the idea after being repeatedly disturbed by potential customers knocking on his door after hours.

Gold Bars

Isn’t it annoying when you need some gold bars fast, but all the banks are closed? Gold to Go has got you covered with blast-proof, camera-guarded vending machines that will dispense small wafers of gold in exchange for your cash. The prices are updated automatically every two minutes to keep up with constantly fluctuating gold prices. The machines can be found in airports and shopping malls in Abu Dhabi, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and a few U.S. locations.

Beer & Wine with a Side of CCTV

Show your ID to a real live person watching you via CCTV from a call center, blow into a breathalyzer to prove you’re not already drunk, and you can get a bottle of wine from a vending machine in Pennsylvania. The kiosks, introduced in response to the state’s archaic liquor laws, can be found in grocery stores. In Japan, some vending machines will pour you a pint of draught beer, while others offer a range of cans. For a promotion, Amstel offered free beer to any customer who could stand completely still in front of a vending machine for three minutes.

iPods & Other Gadgets

Best Buy’s airport kiosks are an increasingly common sight, offering last-minute, travel-oriented gadgets like digital cameras, phone batteries, headphones and pre-paid international cell phones. Better hope you press the right button, because if you need to return something, you’ll have to call an 800 number and wait for a prepaid label to come in the mail. Vending machines offering virtually every iteration of the iPod have also been spotted, and it’s almost guaranteed that they aren’t endorsed by Apple.