Creationism in Crisis - Now Cockatoos Have Been Seen Choosing Tools For A Task

Creationism in Crisis

Now Cockatoos Have Been Seen Choosing Tools For A Task

Goffin's cockatoo not only makes tools but selects the right ones to take to work

Source: Natural History Museum
©SunyawitPhoto/Shutterstock

Platform and table setups during experiment 3

(A) Walking phase.
(B) Horizontal flight.
(C) Vertical flight.

Osuna-Mascaró, Antonio J. et al.

Cockatoos know to bring along multiple tools when they fish for cashews -- ScienceDaily

Imagine you're a Creationist fraud trying to convince your credulous cult that a magic man in the sky made humans specially and flattering your target marks by citing our high intelligence as evidence of our difference, as though we are the only species to have something that makes us unique (like every other species has). Then along come a bunch of clever scientists and shows that another, very distantly related species, a cockatoo, is also highly intelligent.

The conclusion any sensible person is going to draw from this is that intelligence is not unique to humans but is an evolved trait that has arisen in many distantly related species such as octopuses, bees, birds, and several mammals. That it has arisen independently can be concluded from the fact that it is a relatively rare trait. If it had evolved from a remote last common ancestor of cephalopods, insects, birds and mammals it would be almost universal in the animal kingdom, not unusual.

How then do you fool a sensible person into thinking humans are unique with a unique design which includes high intelligence, when the evidence shows otherwise? Well, you don't, of course. As a dedicated confidence trickster and fraud, your target market is the lower few percentiles of the IQ curve and those whose thinking ability has been inhibited by theophobic psychosis, also known as religious fundamentalism, an acute anxiety disorder normally caused by mental abuse in childhood, so you simply ignore the evidence, confident that they are very unlikely to read it, but if they do they won’t understand its significance and will wave it aside because it doesn’t support them.

You will have targeted that demographic specifically because of their inability to evaluate complex evidence and draw valid conclusions from it, or to change their minds from those opinions foisted on them by childhood conditioning and maintained by the terror of thinking they could be wrong under the watchful eye of an invisible mind-reading sky bogeyman who has a uniquely terrifying punishment waiting for doubters.

So here then is an account of how a species of bird, the Goffin's cockatoo, Cacatua goffiniana, not only quickly learns to use two different tools to solve a problem with a two-stage solution, but then remember what tools it needs for the task and selects them to take with it when leaving to perform the task.

Captive cockatoos are presented with a puzzle to solve - how to retrieve a cashew nut from an enclosed box and behind a transparent membrane. The birds have two tools - one strong enough to pierce the membrane but not long enough to reach the cashew nut, and one long enough but not strong enough. They quickly learn to break the membrane first then use the longer tool to get the nut.

Two of the cockatoos learned the trick in 35 seconds!

Figaro flying transport of both tools to the platform.

Source

The experiments, which show that Goffin's cockatoos are the first species other than humans and chimpanzees to be shown to be capable of choosing a tool set for a task, was conducted by a team from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria, led by Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró. It builds on earlier research by members of the team in which they showed that wild Goffin's cockatoos make tools to extract seeds from sea mangoes.

The experiment and its significance were explained in information provided by Cell Press:

Goffin's cockatoos are small white parrots that hail from the Tanimbar Islands archipelago in Indonesia. Captive Goffin's cockatoos use and manufacture tools, and a recent study of wild-caught cockatoos reported that they can use up to three different tools to extract seeds from a particular fruit. Up until now, though, it wasn't clear whether the cockatoos considered these tools as a "set"; it's possible that what may look like a toolset is instead nothing more than a chain of single tool uses, with the need for each new tool appearing to the animal as the task evolves.

With this experiment we can say that, like chimpanzees, Goffin's cockatoos not only appear to be to using toolsets, but they know that they are using toolsets. Their flexibility of behavior is stunning.

Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, first and corresponding author
Evolutionary biologist
Messerli Research Institute
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria.

Now, a team of researchers have used controlled experiments to clarify that the cockatoos do indeed recognize when a job requires more than one tool.

Osuna-Mascaró was inspired by the termite-fishing Goualougo Triangle chimpanzees of northern Congo, the only other known non-human animal to use toolsets. These chimpanzees fish for termites via a two-step process: first, they use a blunt stick to break holes in the termite mound, and then they insert a long, flexible probe to "fish" the termites out of the holes. In this study, Osuna-Mascaró's team tasked the cockatoos with fishing for cashews instead of termites.

To mimic the termite-fishing set-up, the researchers presented the cockatoos with a box containing a cashew behind a transparent paper membrane. To reach the cashew, the cockatoos had to punch through the membrane and then "fish" the cashew out. They were provided with a short, pointy stick for punching holes and a vertically halved plastic straw for fishing.

Seven of the ten cockatoos tested taught themselves to extract cashews successfully by punching through the membrane, and two of the cockatoos (Figaro and Fini) completed the task within 35 seconds on their first attempt. The cockatoos don't have an equivalent foraging behavior in the wild, so there was no chance that their tool use was based on innate behaviors, and each cockatoo used a slightly different technique.

The cockatoos had to act according to the problem; sometimes the toolset was needed, and sometimes only one tool was enough.

We've learned how dexterous the cockatoos are when using a toolset, and we have a lot of things to follow-up on. The switching behavior is very interesting to us, and we are definitely going to use it to explore their decision making and their metacognition -- their ability to recognize their own knowledge.

Antonio Osuna-Mascaró.

Next, the team tested the cockatoos' ability to change their tool use in a flexible manner depending on the situation. To do this, they presented each cockatoo with two different types of box: one with a membrane and one without. The cockatoos were given the same two tools, but they only needed the pointy stick when a membrane was in the way.

All of the cockatoos mastered the test in a very short period of time and were able to recognize when a single tool was sufficient. However, the birds engaged in an interesting behavior during this choosing phase. "When making the choice between which tool to use first, they were picking one up, releasing it, then picking up the other one, releasing it, returning to the first one, and so on," says Osuna-Mascaró. The researchers found that when cockatoos did this switching, they performed better on the tests.

Next, the team tested the cockatoos' ability to transport the tools as a set on an as-needed basis. They put the cockatoos through a series of increasingly challenging trials to reach the boxes: first they had to climb a short ladder while carrying their tools; then they had to fly horizontally with them; and in the final test, they had to carry the tools while flying vertically. As before, the birds were only sometimes presented with a box with a membrane barrier, so they had to decide whether the problem required one or both tools.

We really did not know whether the cockatoos would transport two objects together. It was a little bit of a gamble because I have seen birds combining objects playfully, but they very rarely transport more than one object together in their normal behavior.

We feel that, in terms of technical cognition and tool use, parrots have been underestimated and understudied.

Alice Auersperg, senior author
Cognitive biologist
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria.

Some cockatoos learned to carry the two tools together -- by inserting the short punching stick into the groove of the halved straw -- when they were presented with a box that required both. This meant they only had to make one trip, albeit while carrying a heavier toolset. Most of the cockatoos transported the toolset on an as-needed basis, further indicating that they knew ahead of time when two tools were required, though some made two trips when necessary. One cockatoo, Figaro, decided not to waste time thinking and instead carried both tools in almost every trial.

There's a lot more to be learned about cockatoo tool use, the researchers say.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The team's open access paper in Current Biology gives more detail in the abstract:

Highlights

• Captive Goffin’s cockatoos are able to innovate the flexible use of a tool set
• Goffin’s can switch flexibly between transporting a tool set or individual tools
• Results suggest the ability to recognize the need for a tool set
• Results suggest a convergence of associative tool use between birds and primates

Summary

The use of tool sets constitutes one of the most elaborate examples of animal technology, and reports of it in nature are limited to chimpanzees and Goffin’s cockatoos. Although tool set use in Goffin’s was only recently discovered, we know that chimpanzees flexibly transport tool sets, depending on their need. Flexible tool set transport can be considered full evidence for identification of a genuine tool set, as the selection of the second tool is not just a response to the outcomes of the use of the first tool but implies recognizing the need for both tools before using any of them (thus, categorizing both tools together as a tool set). In three controlled experiments, we tested captive Goffin’s in tasks inspired by the termite fishing of Goualougo Triangle’s chimpanzees. Thereby, we show that some Goffin’s can innovate the use and flexibly use and transport a new tool set for immediate future use; therefore, their sequential tool use is more than the sum of its parts.

Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró, Mark O'Hara, Remco Folkertsma, Sabine Tebbich, Sarah R. Beck, Alice M.I. Auersperg.
Flexible tool set transport in Goffin's cockatoos.
Current Biology, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.01.023

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Once again then we find the claims of creationists to not only be unsupported by real-world evidence but comprehensively refuted by it. No wonder the frauds who run the cult have given up on using evidence, honestly presented, and an accurate representation of the science and now rely wholly on lies, disinformation and dishonest misrepresentation to win the gullible recruits to their political cult.

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