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Topic: New Caledonian Crow

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	Tool-Using Crows Give New Meaning to Term `Bird Brained'
		While tool use among birds is not unheard of, Hunt's New Caledonian crows, close kin to American crows, were observed employing two distinctly different kinds of tools to forage for invertebrates such as insects, centipedes, and larvae.
		Hunt's report suggests that the tool-making and tool-using behavior of crows rivals that of Homo erectus, although the issues, Boesch notes, "are not straightforward." He argues that chimpanzees have shown a level of tool manufacture and use comparable to that described by Hunt.
		Hunt's observations on the New Caledonian crows are not sufficient to determine whether the tool manufacture and use is transmitted genetically, culturally, or a combination thereof, she noted.
	www.jcrows.com /crow.html (1205 words)

	NationMaster - Encyclopedia: New Caledonian Crow (Site not responding. Last check: )
		The bird is endemic to the island of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands in the Pacific, living in primary forest.
		Crows in the northwestern U.S. (a blend of Corvus brachyrhynchos and Corvus caurinus) show modest linguistic capabilities and the ability to relay information over great distances, live in complex, hierarchic societies involving hundreds of individuals with various "occupations," and have an intense rivalry with the area's less socially advanced ravens.
		Kagu, Crow Honeyeater and Red‑throated Parrotfinch, lifers all of course.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/New-Caledonian-Crow (854 words)

	Birdwatching Trip Report from New Caledonia
		The New Caledonian currency is the French Pacific Franc (CFP).
		In New Caledonia there is much confusion regarding the English names for birds, and often each author, having their own preferences which results in the same species having up to 2 or 3 different names.
		Birds of the Solomons, Vanuatu and New Caledonia
	www.birdtours.co.uk /tripreports/new_cal/newcal4/newcal1.htm (3315 words)

	Crows - info and games
		Crows in the northwestern U.S. (a blend of Corvus brachyrhynchos and Corvus caurinus) show modest linguistic capabilities and the ability to relay information over great distances, live in complex, hierarchic societies involving hundreds of individuals with various "occupations," and have an intense rivalry with the area's less socially advanced ravens.
		Crows have also been observed to respond to calls of other species; this behaviour is presumably learned because it varies regionally.
		This would seem to indicate some acknowledgement of crow intelligence, which may have been apparent even in ancient times, and to some might imply that the higher intelligence of crows, when compared to other birds, is striking enough that it was known even then.
	www.sheppardsoftware.com /content/animals/animals/birds/crow.htm (923 words)

	Terrestrial Ecoregions -- New Caledonia dry forests (AA0202)
		The islands of New Caledonia are remarkable for their number of plant species, plant endemics, and the ancient character of much of the flora.
		The New Caledonia Dry Forests [AA0202] ecoregion is found only on the western side of Grand Terre, where the average annual rainfall is much lower than on the rest of the island.
		New Caledonia is a prosperous territory of France, and this prosperity affects the future of its biodiversity.
	www.worldwildlife.org /wildworld/profiles/terrestrial/aa/aa0202_full.html (1490 words)

	Crow Makes Wire Hook to Get Food
		The New Caledonian crow is one of the few birds that probes for food with twigs, a form of tool use.
		New Caledonian crows living in the wild do create hooked probes from twigs, but the captive crow did something very different.
		And since she had no other crows to model, no training with pliant objects, and very limited prior experience with wire, they see her actions as novel and purposeful.
	news.nationalgeographic.com /news/2002/08/0808_020808_crow.html (577 words)

	WORLDTWITCH - New Caledonia Trip Report (1999) by Jon Hornbuckle
		I made a short trip to New Caledonia from Sydney to see as many of the mainland specialities as possible.
		Drink, tolls, Parc entrance fees and food bought on New Cal (most was taken with me from Oz) c.£12 including 2 beers for nearly £5.
		Cuckoo-shrikes, New Cal Fly, Striated Starling and in my case Barred Honeyeater seem to be easier here than at Riviere Bleuee and Grassbird is possible.
	www.worldtwitch.com /new_caledonia_1999.htm (950 words)

	Birdwatching Trip Report from New Caledonia
		Kagu would be a new family for all of us, and we dearly wanted a chance to try to see it.
		One time while doing this, Dollyann spotted the only New Caledonian Cuckoo-Shrike we were to find on the trip.
		The only other new species for this rain-soaked morning were the Notu (New Caledonian Imperial-Pigeon) and Yellow-bellied Robin.
	www.birdtours.co.uk /tripreports/new_cal/newcal6/new-cal-04.htm (4246 words)

	News: Betty the crow is right-handed
		New Caledonian crows, known to be very proficient tool-users, have a preferred way of holding their tools comparable to the way humans are either right- or left-handed, according to research by Oxford zoologists, recently published in 'Biology Letters'.
		Studying the tool use of 10 captive New Caledonian crows, the researchers found that each bird had a consistent preference for holding a piece of dowelling either near its left or its right cheek when trying to retrieve mealworms from a hole in a piece of wood.
		The research was published in: Lateralization of tool use in New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) by Mr AAS Weir, Mr B Kenward, Dr J Chappell and Professor A Kacelnik, 2004, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (Suppl.), 'Biology Letters'.
	www.admin.ox.ac.uk /po/040406.shtml (379 words)

	Earth Island Institute: Earth Island Journal - Fall 2002
		Kanaks and New Caledonian environmentalists have joined hands and planted native trees outside INCO's fence, and a delegation including the president of the Kanak Customary Senate (a council of tribal elders) and the head of Action Biosphere even traveled to Canada to present its case to church and union audiences.
		The New Caledonian crow may not be much to look at, but its behavior sets it apart from all other birds: it's a toolmaker, crafting hooks from twigs and probes from pandanus leaves, then using them to fish out insects and other arthropods from holes in dead wood.
		New Caledonia is a global treasure, and the further degradation of its already battered natural communities would be a global tragedy.
	www.earthisland.org /eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=607&journalID=65 (2534 words)

	Crows are Curious, Smart, and Misunderstood
		Crows are members of the family Corvidae, which includes jays, magpies, ravens and many varieties of crows.
		When the crows were allowed to return to return to the field, they resumed their cutworm feast and the farmer harvested his asparagus.
		This activity among New Caledonia crows was first reported about 25 years ago, and many other mammals and birds, including several species of corvids, have been observed using sticks, leaves, stones and other objects to forage for food.
	www.wildclassroom.net /wildideas/crows.html (1655 words)

	Crows Are Brainiacs - National Zoo\| FONZ
		Aesops crow may have learned its pebble routine by watching its parents or other crows just as blue tits, a European chickadee somewhat larger than ours, learned to open milk bottles in England in the days when milk was delivered daily to doorsteps.
		In the wild, adult New Caledonian crows sever long narrow pandanus (pandanus or screwpine is a stilt-rooted palm native to Southeast Asia) leaves and split them to keep the sharply serrated outside edge intact.
		One lab-raised crow evidently reasoned that, based on past experience with twigs it used to hook otherwise inaccessible food, a certain length of flexible wire (heretofore novel to her) could be made into a tool to hook food vertically from a container inside a plastic tube.
	nationalzoo.si.edu /Animals/Birds/NewsEvents/crow.cfm (1570 words)

	New Caledonian Crows
		The New Caledonian Crow (Corvus moneduloides) is a moderately sized crow (40 cm in length) similar in size to the House Crow but less slender looking.
		The bird is endemic to the island of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands in the Pacific, living in primary forest.
		The New Caledonian Crow is also the only non-human species currently known to spontaneously make tools out of materials it does not encounter in the wild.
	www.avianweb.com /newcaledoniancrows.html (324 words)

	sociology - Crow
		As a group they show remarkable examples of intelligence; it would not be at all an exaggeration to characterize crows as being to birds what higher primates (including humans) are to mammals.
		One species, the New Caledonian Crow, has recently been intensively studied because of its ability to manufacture and use its own tools in the day-to-day finding of food.
		Crows, and especially ravens, often feature in legends or mythology as portents or harbingers or doom or death, because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion, that causes them to circle above scenes of death such as battles.
	www.aboutsociology.com /sociology/Crow (357 words)

	CNN.com - Crow shows she's no bird-brain - August 9, 2002
		The feat, it is said, makes her the first animal other than a human that has shown a clear understanding of cause and effect, and fashioned a tool for a specific task using new materials not encountered in the wild.
		In their native home, the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, crows of such species are known to make tools out of twigs and leaves to winkle out grubs.
		Crows and ravens are both good at solving problems, and experiments have shown that pigeons can identify humans and recognise letters of the alphabet.
	archives.cnn.com /2002/WORLD/europe/08/09/crow.betty/index.html (606 words)

	Untitled Document
		This is a fully accommodated, comprehensive birding tour to New Caledonia designed to seek all the endemic and near-endemic species on the main island (Grand Terre) and nearby islands of the Loyalty group.
		The highlight of New Caledonian birds is the kagu, which like the plains-wanderer, is the sole member of its family.
		Less oddly named species include New Caledonian imperial pigeon (said to be the largest arboreal pigeon in the world), New Caledonian friarbird, New Caledonian myzomela, barred honeyeater, yellow-bellied robin, New Caledonian whistler, southern shrikebill, New Caledonian cuckoo-shrike, striated starling and red-throated parrot-finch.
	www.philipmaher.com /newcaledonia2005.html (628 words)

	News in Science - Stone the clever crows - 09/08/2002
		Betty, a New Caledonian crow, crafted a wire hook to reach some food in an English lab.
		They report in this week's Science an experiment inspired by their captive female crow, Betty, who spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hook then successfully used it to lift a bucket of food from a vertical pipe.
		To investigate the importance of this observation, the researchers designed a new test where they placed a single straight piece of garden wire on top of the food tube to see what happened.
	www.abc.net.au /science/news/stories/s643534.htm (424 words)

	Techno Crow: Do birds build up better tool designs?: Science News Online, March 22, 2003 (Site not responding. Last check: )
		New Caledonian crows don't have cell phones, yet, but researchers propose that these birds may ratchet up the sophistication of the tools they do have and pass along the better designs.
		This New Caledonian stamp honors a crow species that nips twigs and leaves to make tools (at right) for working food out of crevices.
		Although New Caledonian crows are hard to observe directly, Hunt and Gray analyzed the edges of straplike pandanus leaves left behind on trees after a bird has cut out its tool.
	www.sciencenews.org /20030322/fob7.asp (616 words)

	Crows
		Jackdaw-, crow- and raven-sized forms seem to have existed since long ago and crows were regularly hunted by humans up to the Iron Age, documenting the evolution of the modern taxa.
		Crows have also been observed to respond to calls of other species; this behavior is presumably learned because it varies regionally.
		While hawks tend to be the primary daytime predators of crows, their most deadly predators, in many areas, are the owls that hunt by night, preying upon crows sleeping helplessly in their roosts.
	www.avianweb.com /crows.html (1135 words)

	USATODAY.com - Crows exceed expected intelligence levels (Site not responding. Last check: )
		It appears that New Caledonian crows have a knack for using tools that may be exceeded in nature only by us hairless apes.
		Crows, ravens and jays, known as corvids, are an especially clever family of birds.
		New Caledonian crows of the South Pacific are known as avid tool users and frequently use leaves, twigs and feathers to catch prey.
	www.usatoday.com /news/science/2002-08-08-smart-crows_x.htm (503 words)

	School of Biosciences (Site not responding. Last check: )
		New Caledonian crows are a good example of a species showing advanced tool using behaviour.
		These crows are endemic to the south-western Pacific island of New Caledonia, and are the only crows found on the island.
		New Caledonian crows manufacture and use at least three distinct types of tool: hook tools made out of twigs, stepped and tapered tools made from Pandanus sp.
	www.biosciences.bham.ac.uk /staff/staff.htm?ID=90 (332 words)

	Crow Tools: Hatched to putter: Science News Online, Jan. 15, 2005 (Site not responding. Last check: )
		New Caledonian crows are the first vertebrates to be shown definitively to have an instinctive tendency to make and use tools, contend researchers who doubled as bird nannies.
		The New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) is one of the few animal species known to not only use tools but also make them routinely.
		Geographic patterns of tool design suggest that crows have improved their technology, much as people have, by building on the work of earlier generations, he says.
	www.sciencenews.org /articles/20050115/fob7.asp (589 words)

	Crows As Clever As Great Apes, Study Says
		A new study suggests their cognitive abilities are a match for primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas.
		The study notes that crows are also social and have unusually large brains for their size.
		And because different New Caledonian crow populations make these tools to slightly different designs, some scientists take this as evidence of some form of culture, as has been suggested in chimpanzees.
	www.rense.com /general60/apes.htm (871 words)

	Page Title
		Auckland - Crows with a knack for making tools have surprised scientists by showing themselves to be left-handed, a sign of intelligence never seen before at a species level outside humans.
		The New Caledonian crow, Corvus Moneduloides, displays a clear left preference when manufacturing tools from leaves which they use to catch insects.
		The crows are skilful tool makers, cutting a stepped taper from the tough leaf of the pandanus tree which is wide at one end and thin at the other.
	www.voxpopuli-ne.com /2002_01/page9.html (278 words)

	Guardian \| Brainy crow upsets pecking order
		A crow may have fashioned her way into history by demonstrating an understanding of Archimedean physics.
		Betty the New Caledonian crow made a tool from a piece of garden wire and used it to hook a tasty morsel of meat out of a tube too deep for her beak.
		Eight years ago, a biologist watched the crows in their native forests in the south Pacific, making two distinct kinds of tool out of twigs and then using them to fish for larvae in inaccessible bits of wood.
	www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,,4478473-108806,00.html (448 words)

	Something to crow about: birds with tools of trade - theage.com.au
		Early studies showed crows to be almost human-like in their use of tools, with technological features that match the stone and bone-tool cultures that emerged among primitive humans between 2.5 million and 70,000 BC.
		The scars on the remains of leaves used by the crows revealed similarities in the cutting and ripping used for each of the three basic tool designs, and their different but overlapping geographic distributions.
		It complements his own research which has turned Betty the New Caledonian crow into a star by revealing her to be the first animal, other than man, to show a basic understanding of cause and effect.
	www.theage.com.au /articles/2003/03/27/1048653799744.html?oneclick=true (663 words)

	A Bird That Crafts Tools! - The use of tools is an innate and learned capacity at the same time - Softpedia
		Crows and their relatives (ravens, magpies, jays) are considered the most intelligent group of birds.
		The New Caledonia's crow (New Caledonia is an island located east of Australia), Corvus moneduloides, are able to make tools from twigs and even their own feathers in order to get inaccessible food.
		Researchers have discovered that in crow populations living in different regions of the island, tool shapes may vary a lot, so the young crows learn to fashion tools in a particular way inside the group.
	news.softpedia.com /news/A-Bird-That-Crafts-Tools-39450.shtml (585 words)

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