Russell's Crows 2/2 - Metatool use

Professor Russell Gray discusses a recent metatool experiment which suggests the New Caledonian crows exhibit advanced cognitive abilities.

Reference cited -
Taylor, A.H., Hunt, G.R., Holzhaider, J.C. and Gray, R.D. (2007). Spontaneous metatool use in New Caledonian Crows. Current Biology 17, 1504-1507.

Part 1 of Russell's Crows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNaZ3EoWnZg

Alex Taylor discusses a new trap-tube study which builds on the metatool conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M52ZVtmPE9g

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• animal
• cognition
• corvus
• moneduloides
• new
• caledonian
• crows
• evolutionary
• psychology
• metatool
• experiment

[SheriffOfaloaf]

So they can tackle problems requiring meta-tool solutions, but don't recognize the functional differences in their own barbed or barb-less tools? That's odd. Do barb-less tools still manage to gather food, just less efficiently?

[xSilverPhinx]

Personally I find animal cognition fascinating, and a person who still thinks that they are "stupid" after watching what they do is somewhat limited in the realm of human higher cognition.

[mrtruthify]

Yes! It is know very probable that these birds have an even higher cognition than great apes. Another headline i just read proclaims " insects may have a higher degree of inteligence than other animals many times larger, and they may even have conciousness!

[moolamb]

Fascinating stuff! Go Marc :-)

[slave2king]

impressive