crows making tools

[miriam_e]

I meant to post this a while back, but forgot to.

Some months back Betty the New Caledonian crow caused a stir when she demonstrated extraordinary tool-making intelligence. She spontaneously created a hook out of wire in order to get some food. Go to http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/tools/tools_main.html to read more about this and look at the short (1.2Mb) video there showing her actually doing it. At first she tries to get at the food using a straight piece of wire, and at one point almost manages to, but she soon realises this won't work and bends the end of the wire into a hook to lift the food container up.