Adventure Ausrama Blog

Be careful the next time you quietly curse a magpie attacking you during breeding season. It may know what you are thinking. Why is it that the birds seem to know the personalities of individuals walking by? If you have fed them in the past they appear to remember you and let you go on by unhindered while swooping down onto the heads of other people. Crows have been observed hiding food from other crows. This is not due to stress as was once believed. There is still contention between the two opposing groups of scientists. Tests on scrub jays it was claimed proved that they were hiding food from more dominant Jays. This was really a hypothesis, not real proof. The other group claims that birds are conscious of others and what other may be seeing, like humans. In their tests bird were allowed to hide peanuts in a litter of corn cobs. If another bird was watching they later came back and re-hid the peanuts. When they buried peanuts on their own they rarely re-hid them. This ...

It was believed that Man was the only toolmaking animal. In recent times many animals have been seen using tools like wood and rocks mainly to access food. A cockatoo named Figaro kept in captivity in Austria has been using tools to get food. Birds are extremely intelligent creatures. It is known that they mimic sounds such as the human voice. Some can even understand the meaning of basic sentences. Figaro creates tools, modifying tools specifically to get small pieces of food placed outside his cage. Other bird species observed using tools are crows, ravens, woodpecker finches and Herons. A captive New Caledonian crow used wire rather than wood to reach into crevices for grubs. Northern blue jays have used shredded paper to gather up food pellets. In the wild they do not use tools at all. Tool use is not a specific function developed at a particular point in time by a species. It a a general function of high intelligence. To access food, many smart animals can make and us...