Humans have working relationships with many creatures. Sometimes it's win/lose (cows), sometimes it's lose/win (ants) but it's pretty rare that we work out mutually beneficial relationships with other species, especially without domesticating them. The key to doing that, it seems, is working with the animals on their own terms.
This story caught my eye while looking up examples of animals doing complex things. An inventor/computer hacker realized that crows are highly intelligent and trainable, so he designed a bird vending machine and used a 4 step process to train a bunch of crows to hunt out coins and deposit them in the machine for nuts. I'm assuming he designed it so that he makes a bit of profit margin, but even if it's an investment it's worth his insight into the animal kingdom at the end of the article: "His central idea is that certain species have adapted to human environments. We try to kill off adaptive pests like roaches, rats and crows, but we're breeding them to be parasites. Roaches are immune to poison, rats have responded with rapid breeding. But a better goal, Klein says, is to seek an interspecies harmony."
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