Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Animal cognition
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
====Birds==== {{Main article|Bird intelligence}} Several species of birds have been observed to use tools in the wild, including warblers, parrots, Egyptian vultures, brown-headed nuthatches, gulls and owls. Some species, such as the [[woodpecker finch]] of the [[Galapagos Islands]], use particular tools as an essential part of their [[foraging]] behavior. However, these behaviors are often quite inflexible and cannot be applied effectively in new situations. A great many species of birds build nests with a wide range of complexities, but although nest-building behaviour fulfills the criteria of some definitions of "tool-use", this is not the case with other definitions. Several species of [[corvid]]s have been trained to use tools in controlled experiments. One species examined extensively under laboratory conditions is the [[New Caledonian crow]]. One individual called "Betty" spontaneously made a wire tool to solve a novel problem. She was being tested to see whether she would select a wire hook rather than a straight wire to pull a little bucket of meat out of a well. Betty tried poking the straight wire at the meat. After a series of failures with this direct approach, she withdrew the wire and began directing it at the bottom of the well, which was secured to its base with duct tape. The wire soon became stuck, whereupon Betty pulled it sideways, bending it and unsticking it. She then inserted the hook into the well and extracted the meat. In all but one of 10 subsequent trials with only straight wire provided, she also made and used a hook in the same manner, but not before trying the straight wire first.<ref>{{cite journal| vauthors = Hunt GR |title=Manufacture and use of hook-tools by New Caledonian crows |journal=Nature |volume=379 |pages=249β251 |doi=10.1038/379249a0 |year=1996 |issue=6562 |bibcode = 1996Natur.379..249H |s2cid=4352835}}</ref><ref name="psycnet">{{cite journal | vauthors = Shettleworth SJ | title = Do animals have insight, and what is insight anyway? | journal = Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology | volume = 66 | issue = 4 | pages = 217β26 | date = December 2012 | pmid = 23231629 | doi = 10.1037/a0030674}}</ref> Another bird that is highly studied for its intelligence is the African Gray Parrot. American animal behaviorist and psychologist Irene Pepperberg vindicated that African Grays possess cognitive abilities. Pepperberg used a bird named "Alex" in her trials and was able to prove that parrots could associate sound and meaning, demolishing long-held theories that birds were only capable of mimicking human voices. Studies by other researchers have determined that African Grays can use deductive reasoning to correctly choose between pairs of boxes containing food and boxes that are empty.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pallardy|first=R|date=May 28, 2020|title=African gray parrot|url=https://www.britannica.com/animal/African-gray-parrot|journal=Encyclopedia Britannica}}</ref> Until Pepperberg began this research in the 1970s, few scientists had studied intelligence in parrots, and few do today. Most inquiries have instead focused on monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, and dolphins, all of which are much more difficult to raise, feed, and handle.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Caldwell|first=M|date=January 2000|title=Polly Wanna PhD?|journal=Discover|volume=21}}</ref> By the late 1980s, Alex had learned the names of more than 50 different objects, five shapes, and seven colors. He'd also learned what "same" and "different" meanβa step crucial in human intellectual development<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Partal|first=Y|title=Animal intelligence: The Smartest Animal Species in the World|journal=Zoo Portraits}}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)