Crow in Japan tries to buy a train ticket from a machine with a credit card.

Crows are often praised for their intelligence, known to make tools, understand cause and effect, and retain information for long periods of time. They also appear clever enough to opt for the convenience of the Japanese transportation system rather than wear out their wings when it suits them. Now it seems at least one crow has upgraded in their knowledge of maneuvering around a Japanese train station, going so far as to pluck a credit card out of a customer's hand in an attempt to operate a ticket machine!

Japanese Twitter user Kinoshita (@kinoshi42155049) the humorous scene at Kinshicho Station in Tokyo, and while the crow likely wasn't actually trying to purchase a ticket, its curiosity and perhaps observation of human behavior resulted in semi-successfully operating the ticket machine. As the automated voice instructs the crow to hit a button and make a payment, the clever bird causally waltzes over to a customer charging their commuter pass and snatches her credit card away from her. The crow then momentarily appears to try to insert the card into the machine, before kindly answering the customer's polite pleas to return the card (she even thanks the crow).

The story even made the news.