New Caledonian crows are known to spontaneously use tools in the wild. This task, designed by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and the University of Oxford, presented the birds with a novel problem that they needed to make a new tool in order to solve.[...]
The sticks were designed to be combinable - one was hollow to allow the other to slot inside. And with no demonstration or help, four out of the eight crows inserted one stick into another and used the resulting longer tool to fish for and extract the food from the box. [...]
And this study, he added, has reinforced the evidence that the crows have "highly flexible abilities" that allow them to solve novel problems very quickly with tools they have never seen before.
The researchers suspect that the crows might do this by envisaging a simulation of the problem in front of them - playing out different actions in their brains until they figure out the solution.[...]
The problem-solving demonstrations could also help in the development of artificial intelligence in robots - to discover ways to build machines that are also able to reach "autonomous creative solutions" to new problems.
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