ArticleScientific reports2022
Innovative composite tool use by Goffin's cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana).
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- The flexible, the stereotyped and the in-between: putting together the combinatory tool use origins hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Seizing opportunities: Object neophobia as a factor mediating technical innovation in Goffin´s cockatoos?PloS one · 2025Article
- Mechanical Problem Solving in Goffin's Cockatoos-Towards Modeling Complex Behavior.Adaptive behavior · 2024Article
- Goffin's cockatoos use object mass but not balance cues when making object transport decisions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- How bipedalism shapes humans' actions with hand tools.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Children's limited tooling ability in a novel concurrent tool use task supports the innovation gap.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Hooded crows (Corvus cornix) manufacture objects relative to a mental template.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Dunking rusk: innovative food soaking behaviour in Goffin's cockatoos (Biology letters · 2023Article
- Comparing effects of food mechanical properties on oral processing behaviors in two sympatric lemur species.American journal of biological anthropology · 2023Article
- Recent developments in parrot cognition: a quadrennial update.Animal cognition · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Composite tool use (using more than one tool simultaneously to achieve an end) has played a significant role in the development of human technology. Typically, it depends on a number of specific and often complex spatial relations and there are thus very few reported cases in non-human animals (e.g., specific nut-cracking techniques in chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys). The innovative strategies underlying the innovation and spread of tool manufacture and associative tool use (using > 1 tools) across tool using animals is an important milestone towards a better understanding of the evolution of human technology. We tested Goffin's cockatoos on a composite tool problem, the 'Golf Club Task', that requires the use of two objects in combination (one used to control the free movement of a second) to get a reward. We demonstrate that these parrots can innovate composite tool use by actively controlling the position of the end effector and movement of both objects involved in a goal directed manner. The consistent use of different techniques by different subjects highlights the innovative nature of the individual solutions. To test whether the solution could be socially transmitted, we conducted a second study, which provided only tentative evidence for emulative learning. To our knowledge, this indicates that the cognitive preconditions for composite tool use have also evolved outside the primate lineage.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.