Foraging for fat: Crafty crows use tools to fish for nutritious morsels
Tool use is so rare in the animal kingdom that it was once believed to be a uniquely human trait. While it is now known that some non-human animal species can use tools for foraging, the rarity of this behaviour remains a puzzle. It is generally assumed that tool use played a key role in human evolution, so understanding this behaviour's ecological context, and its evolutionary roots, is of major scientific interest. A project led by researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Exeter examined the ecological significance of tool use in New Caledonian crows, a species renowned for its sophisticated tool-use behaviour. The scientists found that a substantial amount of the crows' energy intake comes from tool-derived food, highlighting the nutritional significance of their remarkable tool-use skills. A report of the research appears in this week's Science...
