Comments on: Capuchin monkeys are choosy about the best nutcrackers

By: spyra

spyra — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:40:44 +0000

Cool article. If expertise comes with experience, then it’s no surprise that zoo monkeys are less successful– they probably haven’t had to crack as many nuts as their wild counterparts.
In addition to aquatic mammals and monkeys, crows are also very clever. I once saw a video of a crow presented with a straight wire and a tub with a bucket with food at the bottom. The bird can’t reach the food on its own, but was very quickly able to bend the wire into a hook to fish the bucket out. What’s more interesting was that while both males and females had similar success, males in the presence of females would back off and let the female fish the food out first, then steal the food from her when he has the chance.

By: Paul Murray

Paul Murray — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:30:26 +0000

I saw a black-faced macaque make and use a tool at a zoo once. It grabbed some brushwood from its enclosure, stripped the branches, put the remaining thick twig in a hole in a (railway) sleeper and used that support as leverage so that it could use it’s body weight to snap it to a convenient length, then it took the remaining stick began poking it up into a faucet in its enclosure. (The handles get removed, of course, in monkey enclosures. It was a very hot summer, and I assume it was trying to get fresh water out of the faucet).
Changed my ideas a bit – I had bought the whole “Man: the tool-user” thing.

By: DDeden

DDeden — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:45:54 +0000

They also use oyster shells to pry oysters off of mangrove trunks, so they understand both the head and claw of a hammer. They’ll be building little rainforest cottages soon.