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The Conversation
The Conversation
Rob Heinsohn, Professor of Evolutionary and Conservation Biology, Australian National University

Goffin’s cockatoo named third species that carries toolsets around in preparation for future tasks

Thomas Suchanek, CC BY-SA

From pocket knives to smart phones, humans keep inventing ever-more-sophisticated tools. However, the notion that tool use is an exclusively human trait was shattered in the 1960s when Jane Goodall observed our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, retrieving termites from holes with stripped twigs.

Tool use among non-human animals is hotly debated. It’s often thought a big brain is needed to understand the properties of objects, how to finely manipulate them, and how to teach this to other members of a species.

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