Well, Crows Can Make Tools

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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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.
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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).
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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....
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