Scientists who have studied these birds for years say they have already revealed the very earliest stages of innovation.
VICTORIA GILL: ‘A small South Pacific island is home to a crow with remarkable abilities that have scientists hooked. New Caledonian crows make and use tools – including a kind of fishing hook. They can solve complex problems and have even been recorded capturing grubs by repeatedly poking them with a stick until they are so agitated, they bite. Now, an experiment using a vending machine specifically designed for crows has revealed something about how intelligence evolves. The “vending experiment” is the latest in an ongoing investigation into these birds’ abilities…
It is actually a cleverly-designed intelligence test. Dr Sarah Jelbert, from University of Cambridge, who developed it, explained that to delve into the birds’ cognitive abilities she had to see them learning something new. So the idea was to create a task unlike anything crows would find in nature. “They’d obviously never find paper or card in the wild,” said Dr Jelbert, “so we developed this vending machine that that they could drop small pieces of paper into to release a treat – a little piece of meat”…
For their study, which was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, the scientists really wanted to know whether the birds could make the right size “paper token” from memory. This, Dr Jelbert says, had the potential to be the snapshot she wanted that explained how wild birds learned to make complex, crafted tools – like those hooks they make to fish for grubs… the researchers provided each of eight crows with a vending machine that would release a treat only when a particular size of paper was inserted.
“Then,” explained Dr Jelbert, “we tested whether they could remember which size worked, and whether they would make it themselves.” The birds had no template – they just had to remember the size of paper token their particular vending machine required. Dr Jelbert added: “And we found that all the adult birds spontaneously made the right sized piece of card for their vending machine”… Scientists who have studied these birds for years say they have already revealed the very earliest stages of innovation’. SOURCE…
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