Items13The creator’s order
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New Caledonian crowIn an Oxford experiment, a crow named Betty bent straight wire into a hook and used it to lift a small bucket of food from a tube. The experiment showed how one bird could shape an unfamiliar material into a tool that fit the task. Field researchers have also documented New Caledonian crows shaping…0 - 2
KeaKea watched people reach into jars holding different proportions of rewarding and unrewarding tokens. The parrots tended to choose the hand that had sampled from the better odds. They could also take account of a barrier that made some of the tokens in a jar unreachable.0 - 3
Grey parrotAfter learning spoken labels for numbers, an African gray parrot named Alex was asked about groups of objects. When the requested number was absent, he sometimes answered “none,” a word he had learned in another context. The researchers described it as evidence of a zero-like concept in this…0 - 4
California scrub jayResearchers watched captive scrub-jays recover worms and peanuts they had hidden. The birds preferred the worms after a short delay but shifted toward peanuts after enough time for the worms to spoil, once they had learned the worms’ shelf life. The choice combined what the birds had hidden, where…0 - 5
Common ravenIn one study, trained ravens chose a tool or a token they could use later to get food. Some of the delays ran overnight. Choosing the useful object when the chance to use it was still hours away is consistent with planning, though researchers debate how much practice and learned associations…0 - 6
Tanimbar corellaIn one experiment a box required two tools: one to puncture a barrier and another to reach food. Some Tanimbar corellas, also called Goffin’s cockatoos, carried both tools together to the box when the barrier was present. They were less likely to bring the set when only one tool would do.0 - 7
Clark's nutcrackerResearchers let nutcrackers hide seeds at sites in a room and later return to search for them. Even after 285 days, the birds recovered more caches than researchers expected from random searching. That is a measure of long-term place memory under controlled conditions.0 - 8
Great titIn a British woodland, researchers taught a few great tits to open a feeder by sliding its door either left or right. After the birds returned to their groups, the favored technique spread locally. The feeder worked both ways, so neighboring groups could settle on different ways of getting the same…0 - 9
Rock doveTrained pigeons learned to peck in response to slides of paintings by either Monet or Picasso. They could often make the same distinction with paintings they had never seen during training. The experiment measured how well the birds learned and generalized visual categories.0 - 10
Black-capped chickadeeScientists recorded activity in the hippocampus while chickadees hid and retrieved seeds. Distinct patterns appeared during individual hiding events and reappeared when the birds retrieved those seeds. The researchers compared the patterns with barcodes, which could help distinguish one visit from…0
