ArticleCurrent biology : CB2019
New Caledonian Crows Use Mental Representations to Solve Metatool Problems.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Switch costs reveal vocal-specific executive demands during flexible action selection in crows.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The flexible, the stereotyped and the in-between: putting together the combinatory tool use origins hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- TBC-HRL: A Bio-Inspired Framework for Stable and Interpretable Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- A special issue in honor of the contributions of Professor Nicola S. Clayton FRS.Learning & behavior · 2025Article
- Mechanical problem solving by plush-crested jays: are tools special after all?Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Hooded crows (Corvus cornix) manufacture objects relative to a mental template.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- The irreconcilability of insight.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Why birds are smart.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
- Editorial: Memories for the future.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Social influences on delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and Eurasian jays.PloS one · 2023Article
- Article
- Efficiency fosters cumulative culture across species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture.Nature human behaviour · 2021Article
- Self-care tooling innovation in a disabled kea (Nestor notabilis).Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Convergent evolution of complex cognition: Insights from the field of avian cognition into the study of self-awareness.Learning & behavior · 2021Review
- Commentary: Dog Stick Chewing: An Overlooked Instance of Tool Use?Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Sticks and stones: Associative learning alone?Learning & behavior · 2020Article
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8 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the mysteries of animal problem-solving is the extent to which animals mentally represent problems in their minds. Humans can imagine both the solution to a problem and the stages along the way [1-3], such as when we plan one or two moves ahead in chess. The extent to which other animals can do the same is far less clear [4-25]. Here, we presented New Caledonian crows with a series of metatool problems where each stage was out of sight of the others and the crows had to avoid either a distractor apparatus containing a non-functional tool or a non-functional apparatus containing a functional tool. Crows were able to mentally represent the sub-goals and goals of metatool problems: crows kept in mind the location and identities of out-of-sight tools and apparatuses while planning and performing a sequence of tool behaviors. This provides the first conclusive evidence that birds can plan several moves ahead while using tools.
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