Biologists have known for years that New Caledonian crows, Corvus moneduloides , are capable of making, using and preserving a variety of tools, such as sticks and hooks, which they use to capture insects and other small prey on which they feed. Now, an international team of researchers, coordinated by scientists from the University of Saint Andrews, in the United Kingdom, has found that information is transmitted between these birds and between the groups that they integrate in a way similar to how it flows in a social network.
“Among animals, the use of tools is not frequent”, highlights zoologist James Saint Clair, from the aforementioned British institution, who has led the trial. “Individuals not only have to be clear about how to do them. They must also know where, when and how to use them. We wondered if, in this sense, crows could learn this kind of skills from their neighbors, so we analyzed how the information spread among them ”, says this expert.
To find out, Saint Clair and his collaborators attached small transmitters to 41 of these ravens, endemic to the archipelago that gives them their name, in Melanesia. The devices communicated with each other, so that the researchers could know at any time if a corvid was meeting a congener. Then, they built a scenario where it could be appreciated how changes in the environment conditioned the exchanges of information.
“The idea was to check if there was a transmission of knowledge about the use of tools,” says biologist Christian Rutz, one of the co-authors of the study, recently published in the journal Nature Communications . The scientists introduced larvae into a pile of specially arranged logs to make it difficult for the birds to get hold of them. “We reasoned that in this way the crows would congregate and it would be easier for some to learn from each other . We found that, in essence, this strategy had the same effect on them as putting a coffee machine in an office. The specimens were gathered around the source of resources and the dissemination of information increased notably ”, Rutz emphasizes.
