Crows can make useful parts by assembling the parts of falling apart

by Mikes Photos

A crow known as a bird with very high intelligence has the ability to use tools and avoid only dangerous parts of animals serving as food, and use crows to collect cigarette buttocks There was also a system devised. It became clear that such crows can be assembled from scratch in a state without knowing the completion form, which was decomposed into disjointed pieces.

Compound tool construction by New Caledonian crows | Scientific Reports
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-33458-z

Crows Can Build Compound Tools Out of Multiple Parts, And Are You Even Surprised
https://www.sciencealert.com/crows-are-so-smart-they-can-make-compound-tools-out-of-multiple-parts

Creating useful tools from several parts has been observed mainly only in primates such as humans and apes. Since the act of assembling several parts requires complicated cognitive abilities, even children of human beings will take several years to master. In order to build up an object, it is not OK if you collide parts and parts randomly, you need to observe the parts in advance, understand their characteristics, and imagine the completed shapes and join them in an appropriate way . Therefore, it is thought that the act of assembling parts is an important milestone concerning the evolution of the brain.

Mr. August von Bayern 's research team at Max-Planck Institute for Avian Studies examined eight caledonia glasses , known for having very high intelligence, to test whether or not they have the intelligence to assemble parts I did it. In experiments, crows were given transparent boxes that had no opportunity to observe so far. There were foods to the crows inside, but there was only a very narrow gap in the box, it seems that it was in a state where you can not get food unless you scoop contents with thin rods.

There were some parts of short rods scattered around the box, but with each bar it will not reach the food. Then the crow arrived at the solution of combining the parts of the stick to produce a long one stick and actually combined the parts to make a long stick. Then I used the stick to insert from the gap of the box and succeeded in getting the target food.

In the experiment, 4 of the 8 crows assembled the parts and was able to get food. Each crow seems to have come up with a way to get food in 4 to 6 minutes after being given a box and a bar, and actually gotten food. Three crows succeeded only in the test of assembling the two parts, but as the crow named "Mango" learned how to get the food once, in order to complete the tool to get the food It seems that we could get food even with more sophisticated patterns that we need to assemble three or four parts.

Although it was known that crows used to use a single tool as a tool for a long time, in this experiment crows suggests that crows can assemble useless parts individually and produce useful tools as well . "To create a complex tool, we need dexterity and patience," the research team says.

The result of this experiment is an observation example that completed and used a tool divided into several parts for the first time other than primates. On the other hand, since the crows' cognitive process has not been found out, crows do not necessarily have cognitive abilities similar to humans and apes. Mr. Bayern said about the discovery, "It is surprising that crows have discovered how to assemble themselves as not being educated or trained to assemble parts, so it is surprising." .

by mali maeder