Clever New Caledonian crows assemble tools

Don’t be calling the New Caledonian Crow a bird brain. Their clever construction techniques reveal them as one bright bird.

The New Caledonian Crow has confirmed its reputation as a clever clogs. Picture: Supplied

Who are you calling a featherbrained? An especially intelligent species of crow has been observed assembling tools from several components, a feat previously only seen in humans and great apes.

Researchers at the University of Oxford presented eight New Caledonian crows with a box containing a small piece of food behind a door with a narrow gap along the bottom.

At first, the scientists left long sticks scattered around. The crows quickly picked one up, inserted it into the gap and pushed the food through an opening on the side of the box.

Next, the food was placed deep inside the box and the crows were provided only with small pieces of stick, too short to reach the food. These pieces could potentially be combined, because some were hollow and others could fit inside them. Four crows partially inserted one stick into another and used the extended pole to reach the food. One bird, named Mango, managed to construct a pole from four pieces of stick.

“The finding is remarkable because the crows received no assistance or training in making these combinations, they figured it out by themselves,” Auguste von Bayern, from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the University of Oxford, said. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Few animals are capable of making and using tools and typically children are only able to create new tools to solve problems from the age of about five, the research team said. Archaeological findings suggest that people began using tools made from more than one component about 300,000 years ago.

The researchers said in a statement: “The crows’ ability to construct novel compound tools does not imply that their cognitive mechanisms equal those of humans or apes, but helps to understand the cognitive processes that are necessary for physical problem solving.”

The New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) is known for its problem-solving abilities. One bird, named Betty, became famous in 2002 for being the first animal or bird ever seen to create a hooked tool by bending wires or twigs. The species is native to the French territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific.

— The Times