The new findings, published in December in Animal Cognition, are still preliminary, but “we really think they suggest very strongly that they’re using tools for a different function,” she said.

Wimpenny led the study while in the lab of Alex Kacelnik, a University of Oxford zoologist who specializes in New Caledonian crow cognition.

While crows are generally clever creatures, New Caledonians are the genus’ valedictorians. Having evolved in a region rich in tree-boring grubs but devoid of woodpeckers, they use twigs to pry insects from wood.

That alone is a special behavior, and New Caledonians have refined it, choosing their twigs carefully and even demonstrating what’s known as sequential tool use: Using twigs to obtain twigs that would allow them to obtain food.

Sequential tool use in particular is considered a possible sign of high-level cognitive powers: understanding causality, analogizing, planning. Whether the birds in fact possess these powers, or happen to be instinctively good at a narrow range of tasks, is inconclusive, but flexible tool use would suggest something more than simple instinct.

“If tools are employed flexibly and for a variety of innovative purposes, then conventional combinations of inherited predispositions and associative learning are challenged and interesting questions emerge,” wrote the researchers.

According to Wimpenny, the researchers first wondered about multi-tool use after their crows used twigs to poke at, among other things, an especially gaudy pair of pants.

To study this more rigorously, 10 of the birds were presented with a variety of objects, from a frisbee and a Hawaiian bracelet to a rubber spider and rubber snake.

Again and again, the crows used twigs to poke the objects. While the researchers note that the birds may have been searching for food, they acted very differently than while foraging.

“It’s very difficult to know exactly why they would use tools to contact objects, but we think the most plausible explanation is not that they saw them as a food source,” said Wimpenny.

It’s now up to other researchers to replicate the findings and identify a purpose. And should New Caledonian crows be found using tools in yet another context, “the evidence would be accumulating that tool use is flexible, and indicative of more general intelligence mechanisms,” Wimpenny said.

As for crows in other parts of the world, only New Caledonians are known to make tools in their natural habitat. “But in terms of general cognitive processes, the speed of learning and innovation, general problem-solving mechanisms, I think they’re pretty uniform,” said Wimpenny. “The crow that you might see out in your garden, might have the same abilities.”

Images & Video: A New Caledonian crow uses a stick to investigate a rubber spider./Jo Wimpenny.

See Also:

• Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users
• Bonobo Females Handier With Tools Than Males
• Tool Use Found in Octopuses
• Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than Fiction
• Monkeys See Selves in Mirror, Open a Barrel of Questions
• Monkeys Are Gadget Junkies, Too

Citation: “New Caledonian crows use tools for non-foraging activities.” By Joanna H. Wimpenny, Alexander A. S. Weir, Alex Kacelnik. Animal Cognition, online publication, December 23, 2010.

Authors: Brandon Keim

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