STUDY: Puffins Seen Using Tools for the First Time
The fact that two distant puffin colonies both contain individuals using tools sticks to scratch their backs and chests is evidence that puffins could be smarter than previously thought.
RYAN F. MANDELBAUM: ‘Researchers watched puffins use sticks to scratch their backs and chests — a behavior previously unknown to scientists. There’s already mounting evidence that certain birds possess advanced intelligence. New Caledonian crows fashion advanced tools, cockatoos dance to music, and chickadees can remember where they hid thousands of cached food items. But there are still a lot of open questions about how tool use arises, in what groups, and why.
This research adds another species to the list of known tool users—one that surprised the researchers… Other non-human animals will use tools to assist in body care; scientists have observed parrots, elephants, and primates scratching with sticks, while many birds will rub ants on their feathers—the birds may use the formic acid that the ants produce to keep insects or other parasites off of their wings…
Seabirds, they write, aren’t often seen using tools. “As such, seabirds’ cognitive capacities may have been considerably underestimated,” the authors write in the paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The fact that to date the only other birds seen scratching with a stick are parrots, prolific tool users and problem solvers, supports this hypothesis”… Birds that spend most of their time at sea aren’t known for tool use, since their superior swimming abilities are usually sufficient to help them get food.
At the same time, it’s possible that these behaviors aren’t known simply because seabirds are hard to observe, since they spend most of their time at sea and breed on inaccessible islands. The fact that two distant puffin colonies both contain individuals using tools could suggest that either this behavior is either genetic or it arose separately in two innovative individuals, which is evidence that puffins could be smarter than previously thought’. SOURCE…
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