Tool Use By Animals
Tools are used by some animals to perform tasks such as the acquisition of food, grooming, or for recreation. Originally thought to be a skill only possessed by humans, tool use often requires a more sophisticated level of intelligence. Primates have been observed exploiting sticks and stones to accomplish tasks. Numerous bird species have also been noted as capable of using tools. The behaviour has also been observed in dolphins, elephants, otters, birds and octopuses. Tools may be used by animals for construction. Very rarely, non-human animals have been observed building their own tools, e.g., primates removing leaves and twigs from a branch or sharpening a stick to use as a weapon.
Opposable thumbs are a benefit in tool use, though creatures without hands have managed to use other body parts to their advantage, notably the mouth.
Read more about Tool Use By Animals: Definition of "tool", Uses, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words tool and/or animals:
“A broken altar, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman’s tool hath touched the same.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)