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Crows match great apes in skilful tool use

A tool-using strategy that was key to the advancement of early humans has been observed by scientists in a bird. “Metatool use,” the ability to use one tool on another, is something that humans and great apes such as chimps and orang-utans are capable of, but with which monkeys struggle.

Now, a study has shown that New Caledonian crows can manage this task easily. Researchers offered the crows a tasty morsel of meat that was out of reach in a box. To reach the food the birds had to use a long stick. But this stick was inaccessible in another box. To reach the long stick, the birds had to prise it out with a smaller stick which they could reach.

“It was surprising to find that these creatures performed at the same levels as the best performances by great apes on such a difficult problem,” said Russell Gray, of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. “Six out of seven birds tried to get the long stick with the short stick at their first attempt at solving the problem.”

Chimpanzees are the most adept ape tool-users apart from humans. Metatool use, involving making more complex and useful tools, was vital in our ancestors’ development, say the researchers. “[It] may reflect the ‘cognitive leap’ that initiated technological evolution,” they write in the journal Current Biology. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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