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Alex Kacelnik: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Alex Kacelnik, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• A crow bent a piece of wire into a hook to solve a puzzle no one taught her

  In 2002, researchers studying New Caledonian crows watched one named Betty spontaneously bend a straight wire into a hook to retrieve food from a tube — a tool she had never seen a…

  — Alex Weir, Jackie Chappell & Alex Kacelnik, Shaping of Hooks in New Caledonian Crows

• This crow bends wire into a hook to fish food out of a tube, unprompted

  New Caledonian crows craft hooked tools from twigs in the wild, stripping and shaping them to pull grubs out of tight crevices. In a 2002 lab test, a crow named Betty spontaneously…

  — Alex A. S. Weir, Jackie Chappell, and Alex Kacelnik, Crafting of Hooks in Tool Use by New Caledonian Crows

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