We’ve all heard how gray parrots can outsmart toddlers in certain tests, and seen Joshua Klein’s TED talk on how he invented a vending machine for crows. But this… this is getting ridiculous.

Below is a video uploaded to Twitter by Yuzu resident Kinoshita Soji while waiting at the Kinshichō Station in Tokyo, Japan. It shows a black crow trying to figure out how to purchase a ticket from one of the self-service vending machines, a task it probably has witnessed being performed by human commuters hundreds of times.

At one point the clever corvid steals a credit card from an unsuspecting elderly lady, but seems to have been unable to figure out how to fulfil the transaction. The repentant thief returned the card to the bemused victim in the end.

Remember the story of the Australian eagles that learned how to use fire in order to hunt? What if they ally themselves with the crows, who eventually learn how to buy flamethrowers on eBay?! Hitchcock help us then…

(H/T Laughing Squid)