…but unfortunately, I have to talk about the weather for a moment: Wow! This weekend was so sunny and awesome! I spent it all at the beach watching the Atlantic beach volleyball championships. I tanned, I swam, I ran, I stayed offline. Now it’s Monday and it’s raining, so I cannot see how it could be more appropriate.
I’d like to harp once more on how little credit we give to animals, and their intelligence. A friend sent me a link on how birds from the same family as crows use tools when necessary (link contains some awesome footage). In this case, they mimicked Aesop’s fable of the crow dropping rocks in a pitcher to raise the water level so it can drink.
The video shows birds in a lab carefully inspecting test tubes with worms on the surface of water they cannot reach. Once rocks are introduced, they drop them in the water, to raise the level enough to eat the worm. What I found striking was the last video, where the birds could tell the difference between water and sawdust, and how they didn’t even bother dropping rocks on the sawdust.
near the end of the article, the authors also made a great point (emphasis added):
Although the study demonstrates the flexible nature of tool use in rooks, they are not believed to use tools in the wild.
“Wild tool use appears to be dependent on motivation,” Bird said. “Rooks do not use tools in the wild because they do not need to, not because they can’t. They have access to other food that can be acquired without using tools.”
As Bird noted, that fits nicely with Aesop’s maxim, demonstrated by the crow: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
As per usual in these types of posts, I sign off with someone else’s thoughts, in this case, Einstein:
Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
