Well, Crows Can Make Tools

Posted by TheGoodReverend in Everything Else on July 19, 2007 at 3:10 pm


I see your talking raven and raise you one tool-fashioning crow.

To obtain out-of-reach food, the crow repeatedly took a piece of straight wire and bent it to create a hook. According to the researchers, who report their findings in the August 9, 2002 issue of Science, this behavior suggests that New Caledonian crows “rival nonhuman primates in tool-related cognitive capabilities.”

New Caledonian crows living in the wild do create hooked probes from twigs, but the captive crow did something very different.

“To our knowledge, there are no confirmed reports of any animal making a hook out of unnatural material, such as wire, to solve a new problem,” said Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist who coauthored the report with Alex A. S. Weir and Jackie Chappell.

Link (emphasis added)

Snag the play button with a wire hook or go to YouTube


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COMMENT

5 comments to "Well, Crows Can Make Tools"

  1. Andrew
    July 19th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    I thought this was common knowledge. I can't be sure but I seem to remember Jared Diamond mentioning this in his book "The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal" published in 1992....

  2. Bad Cat!
    July 19th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Common knowledge now - this was a *huge* deal when it came out.

  3. TheGoodReverend
    July 19th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    I haven't read the book, but I believe it's been known for a while that crows can *use* tools (pick up a twig to get at food), but only discovered in the past few years that they can actually *fashion* them (bend the wire to a shape that is better at getting the food).

  4. Dan
    July 19th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    There are plenty of birds and other animals that use natural tools. The tailorbird, for example, sews its nest together using grass, spiderweb, or other plant materials.

  5. Nick
    July 24th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    My dad's friend used to have a crow that could talk. It would yell "Phone for Petey!" When the phone would ring.


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