ArticleScientific reports2018
Compound tool construction by New Caledonian crows.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- NSF Workshop Report: Exploring Measurements and Interpretations of Intelligent Behaviors Across Animal Model Systems.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Palaeognath birds innovate to solve a novel foraging problem.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A bounded hierarchy framework for the evolution of syntax.Biology & philosophy · 2025Article
- Hooded crows (Corvus cornix) manufacture objects relative to a mental template.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Socio-cultural brain reprogramming-The uniqueness of human cognition.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Innovative composite tool use by Goffin's cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana).Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Novel neuroanatomical integration and scaling define avian brain shape evolution and development.eLife · 2021Article
- Not by transmission alone: the role of invention in cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Innovative problem solving in macaws.Learning & behavior · 2021Article
- Current Understanding of the "Insight" Phenomenon Across Disciplines.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Avian palaeoneurology: Reflections on the eve of its 200th anniversary.Journal of anatomy · 2020Review
- Kea show three signatures of domain-general statistical inference.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Macphail's Null Hypothesis of Vertebrate Intelligence: Insights From Avian Cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The construction of novel compound tools through assemblage of otherwise non-functional elements involves anticipation of the affordances of the tools to be built. Except for few observations in captive great apes, compound tool construction is unknown outside humans, and tool innovation appears late in human ontogeny. We report that habitually tool-using New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) can combine objects to construct novel compound tools. We presented 8 naïve crows with combinable elements too short to retrieve food targets. Four crows spontaneously combined elements to make functional tools, and did so conditionally on the position of food. One of them made 3- and 4-piece tools when required. In humans, individual innovation in compound tool construction is often claimed to be evolutionarily and mechanistically related to planning, complex task coordination, executive control, and even language. Our results are not accountable by direct reinforcement learning but corroborate that these crows possess highly flexible abilities that allow them to solve novel problems rapidly. The underlying cognitive processes however remain opaque for now. They probably include the species' typical propensity to use tools, their ability to judge affordances that make some objects usable as tools, and an ability to innovate perhaps through virtual, cognitive simulations.
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