Opportunistic Tool Use by Two Unexpected Corvid Species

Several corvid species demonstrate various forms of tool use, either in their natural habitats or in controlled laboratory environments. The wide range of genetically related species exhibiting such complex behaviour allows for hypotheses regarding its evolution and the cognitive abilities of their common ancestor. Although there's much debate on the precise definition of tool use, most experts agree it involves using a manipulable object to change another object's physical characteristics through mechanical interactions (Shumaker et al., 2011). This current report details an event where a house crow (Corvus splendens) and a Sunda crow (Corvus enca) entered the research enclosure and spontaneously solved unattended tool-use tasks. House crows have previously been reported to use tools in captivity (Rajan & Balasubramanian, 1989), but this is the first documentation of Sunda crows using tools. We first describe the instance of tool use before briefly exploring what this event suggests about the potential evolution of tool use in this cognitively advanced family of birds.