After using tools, crows behave more optimistically, study suggests

AUGUST 23, 2019

by Peter Reuell, Harvard University

It's no secret crows are smart. They're notorious for frustrating attempts to keep them from tearing into garbage cans; more telling, however, is that they are one of the few animals known to make tools.

But would you believe doing it actually makes them happy?

That's the finding of a recent paper, co-authored by Dakota McCoy, a graduate student working in the lab of David Haig, George Putnam Professor of Biology, who found that crows behaved more optimistically after using tools. The study is described in an Aug. 19 paper in Current Biology.

"What this suggests is that, just the same way we enjoy something like solving a crossword, they actually enjoyed simply using a tool," McCoy said. "I think it suggests there's a lot more going on in that little head than we think. They get satisfaction out of doing things they're good at, have trained for their whole lives, and that they use frequently."

While tool use in the animal kingdom is not unheard of—chimps use sticks to "fish" for termites and other animals use rocks to smash open nuts or shells—New Caledonian crows stand out for manufacturing multiple complex tools and regularly refining their designs.

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Rare 'Ringo Starr' cockatoo faces extinction due to habitat loss in Far North Queensland

By Shelley Lloyd

Updated 7 Mar 2019, 11:33pm

A rare and beautiful cockatoo, known as the "Ringo Starr" of the bird world, could be extinct in Australia within a decade unless urgent action is taken to protect its habitat in a remote part of Queensland.

Key points:

The Palm Cockatoo is extremely rare and is the only bird in the world that uses a tool musically.

Researchers are worried the bird will be extinct in a couple of decades due to habitat loss and low reproductive success.

The cockatoo is currently listed as vulnerable but researchers are building a case to reclassify it as endangered.

The Palm Cockatoo, which can make its own musical instrument, is only found on the top of Cape York in far north Queensland but its numbers are declining rapidly.

Researchers fear the distinctive black bird, which is Australia's largest cockatoo, could soon disappear because its habitat is being lost to mining and land clearing.

Professor Robert Heinsohn from the Australian National University has been studying the Palm Cockatoo since the 1990s and describes it as "one of the spectacles of the bird world".

"They are magnificent large parrots and very ancient ... right from the start of the family tree for parrots ... and they are just incredibly striking to look at," he said.

"They not only look good but are the rock stars of the bird world ... making drumsticks from branches and banging out tunes to attract the bird ladies."

Professor Heinsohn said the Palm Cockatoo is the only bird in the world that uses a tool musically.

"They break off a branch and peel back the bark, they whittle it down to about 30 centimetres and they hold it in their foot and tap on the edge of their nest hollow," he said.

"They have a very good sense of rhythm and different styles of drumming signatures.

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New Caledonian crows can create compound tools

The birds are able to combine individual parts to form a long-distance reaching aid

Date: October 24, 2018

Source: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and the University of Oxford have revealed that New Caledonian crows are able to create tools by combining two or more otherwise non-functional elements, an ability so far observed only in humans and great apes.

The new study shows that these birds can create long-reaching tools out of short combinable parts -- an astonishing mental feat. Assemblage of different components into novel functional and manoeuvrable tools has, until now, only been observed in apes, and anthropologists regard early human compound tool manufacture as a significant step in brain evolution. Children take several years before creating novel tools, probably because it requires anticipating properties of yet unseen objects. Such anticipation, or planning, is usually interpreted as involving creative mental modelling and executive functions.

The study demonstrates that this species of crow possess highly flexible abilities that allow them to solve complex problems involving anticipation of the properties of objects they have never seen. 'The finding is remarkable because the crows received no assistance or training in making these combinations, they figured it out by themselves,' says Auguste von Bayern, first author of the study from the Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology and University of Oxford.

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New Caledonian crows extract prey faster with complex hooked tools

Date:  January 22, 2018

Source:  University of St. Andrews

Summary:

Biologists have discovered why some crows 'craft' elaborate hooked tools out of branched twigs.

The new study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution today (22 January), explores why crows go the extra mile rather than using simple, unmodified sticks to extract prey -- it allows them to get at hidden food several times faster than if they used basic (non-hooked) tools.

New Caledonian crows are famous for their use of tools to winkle beetle grubs and other small prey out of hiding places. Although crows are capable of extracting food with straight twigs, in some areas they actively manufacture hooked stick tools before going hunting.

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Cockatoos keep their tools safe

Date: May 16, 2017

Source: University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna

Only a few animal species such as New Caledonian crows or some primates have so far been found to habitually use tools. Even fewer can manufacture their own tools. Nevertheless, the Goffin's cockatoo, an Indonesian parrot, exhibit both abilities while seemingly lacking a genetic adaptation for tool use. Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the University of Vienna have now shown yet another tool-related ability in these clever parrots.

After a brief learning phase, they keep their tools safe nearby without dropping them while feeding until the last of five difficult-to-obtain food rewards has been retrieved. In order to succeed, they are able to adapt their behavioural routines in a way that allows for feeding and holding the tool both at the same time. This not only highlights the learning abilities of these animals but also suggests the ability to plan their body movements. The study was published in the scientific journal Animal Behaviour. Any craftsman knows that it is much easier to always keep a pair of pliers or a hammer safe at hand inside a belt instead of having to retrieve it every time it is needed. Having to look for tools, to buy or to manufacture them usually involves a much larger effort than keeping them safe to reuse them at any time.

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Tool-using crow: Rare bird joins clever animal elite

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

14 September 2016

A bird so rare that it is now extinct in the wild has joined a clever animal elite - the Hawaiian crow naturally uses tools to reach food. 

The bird now joins just one other corvid - the New Caledonian crow - in this exclusive evolutionary niche. 

Dr Christian Rutz from St Andrews University described his realisation that the bird might be an undiscovered tool user as a "eureka moment". 

He and his team published their findings in the journal Nature. 

"I've been studying New Caledonian crows for over 10 years now," Dr Rutz told BBC News. "There are more than 40 species of crows and ravens around the world and many of them are poorly studied. 

"So I wondered if there were hitherto undiscovered tool users among them." 

Previously, Dr Rutz and his colleagues have reported that New Caledonian crows have particular physical features - very straight bills and forward-facing eyes. The researchers suggested these might be tool-using adaptations. 

Breeding programme

They then searched the crow family for species with similar features, and Dr Rutz said he quickly realised that the "Hawaiian crow was the perfect candidate for further investigation".

Though it will now be something of a scientific celebrity, the Hawaiian crow has recently been rescued from the very brink of extinction. 

Read on 

Betty the wire-bending crow may have been less insightful than previously believed

August 10, 2016 by Bob Yirka 

A team of researchers with the Centre for Biological Diversity, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, in the U.K. has found that the seemingly clever wire bending abilities of New Caledonian crow Betty back in 2002 may not have been as impressive as scientists at the time thought. They note in their paper published in Royal Society Open Science that while conducting field experiments with other crows of the same species in their native environment, several crows exhibited the same behavior as Betty, suggesting that her behavior might have been more responsive than insightful.

The video of Betty (made by a team at the University of Oxford) using a wire in attempting to retrieve a bucket of meat from inside a bottle captivated the science community when it was first revealed—after poking at the bucket for a minute or so, she pulled the wire out of the bottle, bent the tip to resemble a fish hook, dropped it back into the bottle and then hooked the handle of the bucket, allowing her to pull the meat up and out so she could eat it. The impression was that the crow had come up with a completely novel solution to a problem she had never encountered before—all on the spur of the moment. Such an ability was seen as an example of comparative cognition and high intelligence. But now it appears that Betty may have been engaging in an activity that others of her kind have been doing for quite some time.

To gain a better understanding of Betty's abilities, the researchers ventured to New Caledonia, an archipelago in the South Pacific and home to New Caledonian crows. There, they temporarily captured several specimens and placed them in an aviary. Once inside, the birds discovered that food had been placed in multiple hideaway spots and required the use of tools for retrieval. As the team observed, the birds got right to work using twigs as extensions to reach and retrieve the food. But some also bent the twigs in very nearly the same way as Betty had done in the video, which the researchers suggest made retrieval a bit easier.

These findings suggest that rather than using insight, Betty might have simply been following routines regularly used by members of her species, though the team notes, it does not rule out the possibility that she did understand what she was doing while she was doing it, as did the other birds they observed.

Read more at: 

Unique beak evolved with tool use in New Caledonian crow

Date: March 15, 2016

Source: Cornell University

Cornell researchers have quantified what makes the New Caledonian crow's beak different and how it got that way. Their findings were published March 9, 2016 in the journal Scientific Reports.

It was as plain as the beak on a bird's face. Cornell ornithologist and crow expert Kevin McGowan recalls the day in the late 1990s when he first saw stuffed specimens of the New Caledonian crow.

"I remember saying to a student, 'I don't know what this bird does, but it does something different from any other corvid on Earth because its bill is so weird,'" said McGowan, project manager for distance learning in bird biology at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

In 2000, McGowan read a paper by Gavin Hunt, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, on tool use by these crows and he had an insight into the New Caledonian crow's unusual beak.

Now, Hunt, McGowan and a team of scientists from Japan have quantified what makes the New Caledonian crow's beak different and how it got that way. Their findings were published March 9, 2016 in the journal Scientific Reports.

"We used shape analysis and CT [computer tomography] scanning to compare the shape and structure of the New Caledonian crow's bill with some of its crow relatives and a woodpecker species with a similar foraging niche," said lead author Hunt.

"This study shows that the unique bill contributes to the birds' ability to use and probably make tools," he said. "We argue that the beak became specialized for tool manipulation once the birds began using tools, and that this enhanced tool manipulation ability may have allowed the crows to make more complex tools."

Read on ...