BIRDS have a reputation for not being very bright, which may be why the work of Alex Kacelnik and his group at the University of Oxford is so intriguing. Kacelnik studies New Caledonian crows, which have a knack for using twigs as tools to dislodge tasty morsels and 鈥渇ishing鈥� for grubs, which bite and hold on to the twigs. Even more surprising is their ability to make different-shaped tools. The crows create and use hooks, a feat beyond the powers of chimps and even young children.
Where do these abilities come from 鈥� are they passed on genetically, learned by trial and error, or are they picked up from older birds? Until even a couple of years ago, the smart money was on the last of these, social learning (New 杏吧原创, 17 August 2002, page 44). But in this week鈥檚 Nature, Kacelnik鈥檚 group overturns this idea (vol 433, p 121). Corbeau, a hand-reared crow that had never seen a tool being used, spontaneously began to use twigs to reach food, and even began to make his own tools.
At least some of the crows鈥� abilities, then, seem to be hard-wired into their brains. The challenge now is to track down that adaptation. It also raises the fascinating possibility that crow and human brains share the same tool-making attributes. The researchers go so far as to suggest using New Caledonian crows as surrogate humans for teasing out interactions between the genetic, individual and social forms of learning. Being called a birdbrain will never again carry its former sting.
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