Humans may be the only creatures on Earth that create complex tools like bicycles and programming languages, but a handful of our animal cousins also make and use simple tools. Chimpanzees are known to use rocks as hammers to crack nuts, and some dolphins use marine sponges to search for food along the ocean floor. Recently, the Hawaiian ‘Alalā crow was welcomed to the tool using family when some individual members of that endangered bird species used sticks to ferret out insects for feeding.
A particularly clever avian tool user is shown at work in the above video from the Royal Society, this time a Goffin’s cockatoo. This bird isn’t just making use of a twig that is lying around. He takes raw materials ranging from larch wood to beech twigs to cardboard and custom builds tools to extend his reach. The bird uses its newly fashioned stick to retrieve a bit of food that scientists have left for it on a pedestal in a glass container.
Not shown is an unsuccessful attempt to mold beeswax into a tool. Goffin’s cockatoos “soon lost motivation to interact with this material,” researchers wrote in a paper related to the video.
