Can animals create tools? Tool use by animals

Crafty animals?

Until 1963, when Jane Goodall's work on wild chimpanzees and their tool use was published, most scientists believed that tool use was a trait unique to humans. Half a century later, we are finally beginning to understand that the line between humans and other animals is quite thin. To prove this, we present to our readers descriptions of 15 representatives of the animal kingdom who use tools in everyday life.

Crows

Primates aside, crows are among the most intelligent animals in the world. Their arsenal of resourceful tricks includes manipulating sticks and branches to get insects out of logs, throwing walnuts in front of moving cars to crack the shells, and even using waste paper as a rake or sponge.

Elephants

Elephants have a distinctive ability to use tools with their flexible trunks. They scratch their backs with sticks, fan themselves with leaves to ward off flies, and chew the bark to make it porous enough to absorb drinking water. But perhaps the most amazing property elephants are their artistic abilities. Zookeepers give elephants brushes, and these sensual creatures demonstrate extraordinary talent!

Bowerbirds

Most birds show common feature related to tools: nest building. Bowerbirds, commonly seen in Australia and New Guinea, do even more, and their motives are purely romantic. To attract a mate, male bowerbirds build an elaborate home - a carefully constructed "bow", which is often created using various objects such as bottle caps, beads, glass shards and generally anything that can be found and that attracts attention.

Primates

There are endless examples of primate tool use. Let's name a few of them: chimpanzees use sticks to extract termites, stones and wooden tools to crack nuts, sharp spears made from sticks for hunting; gorillas measure the depth of a pond using a staff; orangutans can open a lock with a paper clip; Capuchins make stone knives by striking pieces of flint on the floor until they have sharp edges.

Dolphins

The intelligence of dolphins is well known, but because they do not have arms, but fins, many experts did not assume that these animals use tools. In any case, until 2005, when a school of bottlenose dolphins was caught interesting activity: they tore their sponges and wrapped pieces around their noses, apparently in order to avoid scratches while hunting on the seabed.

Common vultures

Birds are among the most adept tool users, and one of the most striking examples is the common vulture. One of his favorite delicacies is ostrich eggs, but the thick shell is quite difficult to break. To solve this problem, vultures manipulate stones with their beaks and beat them until the egg cracks.

Octopuses

Octopuses are considered the most intelligent invertebrates on the planet, and they often improvise with tools. This guy in the photo carries two halves of a shell with him and, in case of danger, closes them and thus hides. And another type of octopus tears off the tentacles of jellyfish and brandishes them as weapons during an attack.

woodpecker finch

There are several species of finches that use tools, but the most famous of them is obviously the Galapagos woodpecker finch. Since its beak cannot always squeeze into small holes where insects live, the bird compensates for this deficiency with the help of a branch of a suitable size, with which it takes out food.

Ants and wasps

Even insects use tools, this is especially true social species such as ants and wasps. One of the most famous examples is a leaf-cutter ant that has created an advanced agricultural system by cutting leaves and using them as containers to transport food and water. And solitary wasps break up clods of earth with the help of small pebbles.

Green night herons

The resourcefulness of green night herons allows them to become excellent fishermen. Instead of entering the water and waiting for prey to surface, these animals use fishing lures to force the fish to come within striking distance. Some night herons have been seen scattering food, such as bread crumbs, onto the water to attract fish.

Sea otters

Even strong jaws sea otter not always enough to open the shell of a tasty clam or oyster. And this is where the cute marine mammal gets smart. The otter always carries a stone in the belly area and uses it to open its food.

Archer fish

Most insect-eating fish wait for their prey and then fall awkwardly into the water, but not the archer fish. Instead, the fish of this species use a specially designed mouth to literally shoot insects with a stream of water. And their aim is excellent. An adult shooter almost never misses, and this fish can hit an insect located on a leaf or branch at a distance of no less than three meters.

Crabs

Even crabs use tools. With the help of claws you can perfectly manipulate objects. Some types of crabs dress in sea anemones, pulling them onto his back. Usually they do this for the purpose of camouflage, although in other cases it is probably just to look pretty.

Beavers

Beavers use tools extensively. These animals build their dams to protect themselves from predators and provide easy access to food and smooth swimming. Some dams reach 800 meters in length. Beavers build their structures by cutting down trees and covering them with dirt and rocks.

Parrots

Parrots may be the most intelligent birds in the world, and examples of their use of tools are numerous. Many owners of these birds learn about this skill when the pet, using a piece of metal or plastic, lifts the cage lock. The palm cockatoo (shown here) is known to line its beak with leaves to use a twisting motion to open nuts, much like a human would use a towel to add friction to open a bottle.

Development of abilities

The use of various tools by animals can be instinctive, the result of intelligent thinking, and also depend on many other factors.

Birds and mammals with large brains - primates, dolphins, elephants, crows - learn easily by imitating the habits of other individuals of their species. Imitation - shortest path, leading to the use of tools by animals. Seeing that the activity of an individual is especially effective, other animals begin to imitate it. Primates begin to use tools when they are still young, during play.

If the animal has no experience communicating with various objects in childhood, most likely, later it will not perceive them as tools. Some birds teach their chicks to open the shells of smallmouths.

Tools

In nature there is a ruthless struggle for survival. In the process of evolution, body parts of some animals have turned into unique tools that help them survive. The rare Madagascar aye-aye has unusually thin middle fingers on its forelimbs, with which the animal extracts insects from wood and extracts pulp from coconuts.

When an elephant simply rubs against a tree trunk to scratch an itchy part of its body, it is not yet using a tool. However, scientists have observed elephants breaking off branches and using them to scratch an itchy spot on their body. In this case, we can safely talk about the use of tools.

Mammals

Of all mammals, primates are the best at using various tools. Form thumb and a developed brain allow them to use tools in different areas.

Chimpanzees use branches to dispel dirt from the surface of the water, clean their fur with an armful of leaves, and use compressed leaves to make a sponge, which is used to extract water from hard-to-reach places. They use a similar sponge to collect the remains of the brain from the skull of their prey. Chimpanzees explore the nests of wild bees with sticks, and remove termites and ants with blades of grass. The cubs learn useful skills from experienced animals; their destiny is to process branches for certain purposes. The sea otter also uses special tools.

He hunts where others marine mammals have already collected easily accessible food. The sea otter catches mollusks, the shells of which it has learned to open. The animal uses a flat stone lifted from the bottom as an anvil. Having risen to the surface, the sea otter turns over on its back and places a stone on its chest, starting to cut up mollusks and echinoderms.

Birds

Birds quickly adopt the habits of other animals, which is not a reflection of their intelligence, but rather speaks of natural curiosity. Several species of birds use tools. Some of them use using unusual methods, which are hereditary. For example, the sun heron lures fish by moving its feathers across the water and even throws pieces of food to it. This behavior gives effective result, so it is passed on from generation to generation. Sun herons, which live near places frequently visited by tourists, collect leftovers from picnics and throw them to the fish.

The woodpecker finch extracts insects from under the bark of trees using sticks or cactus spines. Older birds usually use the most suitable tools.

A blue jay was taught in laboratory conditions to get food even with the help of scraps of newspaper. This skill was adopted from her by jays that grew up in natural conditions.

How chimpanzees use tools

Chimpanzees are genetically close to humans. By observing baby chimpanzees growing in captivity, people were able to compare how the development of their abilities differed from the development of the abilities of children. The monkeys deftly used everyday objects such as pots, cups, cutlery, doors, keys, furniture, coloring books and playing cards. At first they learned this even faster than children. Chimpanzees distinguished which objects should be used in which case. They laid out objects on trays, sorting them by color, size and shape. This indicates their developed abstract thinking. In addition, chimpanzees were good at solving practical problems. Scientists conducted a series of experiments by placing a banana behind the bars of a cage, which the monkey could only get by using a stick placed in the cage. It is noteworthy that the test monkeys already had experience communicating with a stick. In specific situations, the monkeys resorted to using sticks of different lengths. In the most difficult experiment, the animals had to make a long stick themselves by connecting two short ones. Rats, cats and even pigeons also have the ability to learn. But only primates can correctly use the necessary tools and approach problem solving creatively. Unique abilities Possessed by dolphins, who, like chimpanzees and gorillas, recognize their reflection in the mirror.

Did you know that...

The vulture breaks the egg by holding it in its beak and hitting it on the rocks. He throws stones from above onto large ostrich eggs. This behavior is typical for all African vultures: the birds learned this from each other.
The octopus is a very smart animal. He covers his tower house, made of stones, with a large stone. Here he not only hides from enemies, but also looks out from under the lid in search of prey.
Without going into the development of labor activity itself, we will note only a few more significant points in addition to what has already been said about the tool activity of monkeys.
First of all, it is important to emphasize that a tool, as we have seen, can be any object used by an animal to solve a specific problem in a specific situation. A labor tool must certainly be specially manufactured for certain labor operations and presupposes knowledge about its future use. They are produced for future use even before the possibility or need for their use arises. In itself, such activity is biologically meaningless and even harmful (a waste of time and energy) and can only be justified by foreseeing the occurrence of situations in which one cannot do without tools.
This means that making tools involves foreseeing possible cause-and-effect relationships in the future, and at the same time, as Ladygina-Kots showed, a chimpanzee is unable to comprehend such relationships even when preparing a tool for its direct use in solving a problem.
Connected with this is the important circumstance that when monkeys use tools, their “working” meaning is not assigned to the tool at all. Outside the specific situation of solving a problem, for example, before and after the experiment, the object that served as a tool loses all functional significance for the monkey, and it treats it in the same way as any other “useless” object. The operation performed by a monkey with the help of a tool is not recorded on it, and outside of its direct use, the monkey treats it indifferently, and therefore does not permanently store it as a tool. In contrast to this, not only man stores the tools he has made, but the tools themselves also store the methods of influence carried out by man on natural objects.
Moreover, even with the individual production of a tool, the production of a social object takes place, because this object has a special way of use, which is socially developed in the process of collective labor and which is assigned to it. Each human tool is the material embodiment of a certain socially developed labor operation.
Thus, the emergence of labor is associated with a radical change in all behavior: from the general activity aimed at directly satisfying a need, a special action is distinguished, not directed by a direct biological motive and receiving its meaning only with the further use of its results. This is one of the most important changes in the general structure of behavior, marking the transition from the natural history of the animal world to the social history of mankind. With the further development of social relations and forms of production, such actions, not directly guided by biological motives, occupy a larger and larger place in human activity and finally acquire decisive importance for all of his behavior.
The true production of tools involves influencing an object not directly with effector organs (teeth, hands), but with another object, i.e. processing of a manufactured tool must be done with another tool (for example, a stone). Findings of precisely such products of activity (flakes, chisels) serve for anthropologists as true evidence of the presence of labor activity among our ancestors.
At the same time, according to Fabry, when manipulating biologically “neutral” objects (and only such could become tools), although monkeys sometimes influence one object on another (Fig. 24), they nevertheless pay attention to the changes occurring with the object direct impact, i.e. with the “tool”, but not on the changes occurring with the “processed” (“second”) object, which serves as nothing more than a substrate, a “background”. In this respect, monkeys are no different from other animals. The conclusion suggests itself that these objective actions of monkeys in their essence are directly opposite to the instrumental labor activity of humans, in which, naturally, the changes in the instrument of labor that accompany it are not so important as the changes in the object of labor (the homologue of the “second object”). Obviously, only under certain experimental conditions is it possible for monkeys to switch their attention to the “second object.”
However, the manufacture of a tool (for example, cutting one stone with the help of another) requires the formation of such specific methods of influencing the “second object”, such operations that would lead to completely special changes in this object, thanks to which only it will turn into a tool. A clear example of this is the manufacture of the most ancient tool of primitive man (a stone hand ax, Fig. 50), where efforts had to be directed towards creating a pointed end, i.e. the actual working part of the tool, and a wide, rounded top (nucleus, nucleus), adapted to firmly hold the tool in the hand. It was through such operations that human consciousness grew.
It is quite natural that from the creation of the first tools such as the hand ax of the Chelles era, and even more so the primitive tool (flakes) of Sinanthropus from the pre-Chelles era, there was still a long way to the manufacture of various perfect tools of labor of a modern type of man (Neoanthropus) (Fig. 51). Even at the initial stage of the development of the material culture of the neoanthrope, for example, Cro-Magnon man, there is a huge variety of types of tools, including the first appearance of composite tools: dart tips, flint inserts, as well as needles, spear throwers, etc. Particularly noteworthy is the abundance of tools for dressing guns Later there are also such stone tools like an ax or hoe.
Rice. 50. Flint hand ax of the Chelles era
Rice. 51. Late Paleolithic tools

In 1963, after many years of observations of wild chimpanzees, Jane Goodall published a paper on the use of various tools by monkeys. Before this, the scientific world believed that the ability to use tools, and especially to make them, was a trait that was unique to humans.

If you look more closely at fauna, then it becomes clear that absolutely everyone works and many people use a wide variety of tools in their lives. Jane provided the first documented examples of wild animals not only using objects as tools, but also modifying them to suit their needs.

Monkeys

The working skills of monkeys can be listed endlessly. They use a lot of tools: from simple shelves to the production of complex tools. Many species use sharp spears for hunting, gorillas have learned to measure the depth of a reservoir with a staff, and capuchins beat off pieces of silicon to make knives. Many primates clean their fur with armfuls of dry leaves, and compressed leaves are used as sponges when it is necessary to remove water from holes.

Crows

Crows took an honorable second place after primates in intelligence and intelligence. Their arsenal of resourceful tricks is wide and varied. They use branches to extract insects from logs and drop walnuts from a height onto a hard surface to break the shell.

Vultures

Big birds love to eat ostrich eggs, but it is very difficult to break the thick shell even with their powerful beak, so vultures use a stone that they drop onto the delicacy.

reel

The Galapagos woodpecker finch, in order to get tasty insects from small holes in the bark, finds a stick of a suitable size and, holding it in its beak, picks out lunch.

Kwak

The resourcefulness of feathered fishermen is enviable. They do not like to wait long for some fish to approach the surface of the water. Birds throw bait (crumbs of bread or other leftover food) into the pond, which attracts fish and soon the future lunch will peck at the bait.

Bears

Bears deftly balance on their hind legs, which allows them to fully use their free front paws and hold tools. Forest clubfoots use sticks to knock fruit from trees, and polar bears sometimes pick up stones and blocks of ice in their paws to kill pinnipeds.

Otters

Sea otters love oysters, but even these strong jaws They cannot always cope with a strong shell, so the creature carries a pebble in a fold on its stomach, which it uses to deftly open its prey or find a block at the bottom.

Tools are used not only by people, but also by animals. Crows, for example, have sticks in their arsenal with which they rake fallen leaves. Often these smart birds dropping nuts from a height to crack the shells.

Chimpanzee. Photo: Tambako the Jaguar/flickr.com Elephants can scratch their backs using a branch that they grasp with their flexible trunk. In addition, elephants can draw.
Chimpanzees use sticks to get termites, break nuts with stones, and hunt using sticks. Gorillas, when crossing a river, measure the depth using a staff. Capuchins make something like a knife by cutting off the edges of stones.

To feast on ostrich eggs, vultures take stones in their beaks and beat the eggs until they crack.
Octopuses are considered the smartest invertebrates; they build shelters from coconut halves or mollusk shells. In case of attack, octopuses close the entrance to their abode with the second half of a nut shell or other shell.
The woodpecker finch extracts insects from the bark of trees using a twig if it cannot reach the bug with its beak.
Even ants use tools. For example, leaf-cutter ants cut leaves and use them to transport food and water.

Sea otters open oyster or clam shells using rocks.
Dolphin. Photo: morguefile.com Crabs camouflage themselves by placing them on their backs seaweed or shells.
Beavers build real castles from branches and sticks, they even line their structures with stones and dirt.
A parrot can open the cage lock using a piece of plastic. And the cockatoo covers its beak with leaves, this helps them open the nuts, much like a person does when they need to open a bottle, only we use towels to increase friction.
Dolphins, when hunting on the bottom, can wrap their noses in seaweed to protect it from scratches.