Crows in New Caledonia Make and Use Tools, Naturalist Says : SCIENCE FILE / An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment
- Share via
Crows living in New Caledonia’s rain forests are as advanced as Stone Age humans when it comes to using tools, according to a New Zealand naturalist.
Reporting in Nature, Gavin Hunt of Massey University wrote that the birds stripped a twig of leaves, and sometimes bark, and cut it off just below a shortened offshoot to create a hook. They also used a barbed type of leaf that they cut to a pointed shape. Crows throughout the forest used the tools to dig insects out of crannies. Hunt said humans did not reach this degree of sophistication until the Lower Paleolithic era.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
There’s more than a dozen candidates currently on the ballot. Can Bass hold on to her seat? Or could councilmember Nithya Raman or reality star Spencer Pratt take it?
In 2012, the judge presiding over Orange County’s worst mass-shooter case gave a seemingly simple order. He told the Sheriff’s Department to reveal information about a mysterious jailhouse informant.
Modern LA earned its first smoggy nickname 450 years ago, as the “bay of smokes.” At the La Brea tar pits, we take a short walk through a long history with curator Regan Dunn, who explains how and why the first Angelenos would have set fires that filled the broad bowl of LA and foretold the curse of smog.
