
First evidence found of tool use by seabirds - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-evidence-tool-seabirds.html
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acvny
This is hilarious. If you watch the video you could see that the bird picked
up that stick and then needed to scratch its belly, but it didn't want to
throw the nice stick either. This looks ... natural :)

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ianai
Indeed. Could also just be grooming as I’m not sure the bird would feel that
under his thick feathers.

Pretty sure a researcher would conclude my cat uses me as a very sophisticated
tool. I’m pretty responsive to his demands and the guy steers me around with
his body all day (standing in my way, ankle rubs, knocking things down, etc)

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catalogia
I expected this to be about sea gulls. I think they're smarter than most
people give them credit for; I've seen them open zippered bags on the beach,
and they have a sort of fearless approach to humans that reminds me of the way
crows behave around humans.

Apparently tool use has been observed in some gulls so maybe the the article
title is overstating the matter a little (unless gulls aren't considered
seabirds?):
[https://bioone.org/journals/waterbirds/volume-29/issue-2/152...](https://bioone.org/journals/waterbirds/volume-29/issue-2/1524-4695\(2006\)29%5b233%3aTICABB%5d2.0.CO%3b2/Tool-
use-in-Charadrii--Active-Bait-Fishing-
by-a/10.1675/1524-4695\(2006\)29\[233:TICABB\]2.0.CO;2.short)

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nvrspyx
The title is definitely overstating and the linked journal article is more
informative. IMO, the article title should have been:

____

 _First evidence found of body-care-related tool use by seabirds_

____

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haihaibye
Why aren't nests considered tools?

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caconym_
From a quick Googling it looks like birds' nest-building techniques can differ
by individual and can be learned/shared among social peers. So, yeah, it seems
like they maybe should be classified as tools.

Contrast this with "fixed action patterns" like the way cats try to bury their
shit and piss even to the point of pawing at the smooth floor next to their
litterboxes. Superficially it seems like a fairly sophisticated behavior, but
it's really a hardwired compulsion.

Nest-building might be somewhere in the middle. I don't know if a bird raised
with zero socialization is typically capable of building a nest.

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eloff
Ants are interesting in that their use of agriculture predates humans.
Somewhat humbling to think that ants with their insignificant insect brains
had that figured out for millions of years before our ancestors did.

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matt-attack
Who’s to say humans didn’t copy the ants? I’ve always been fascinated by what
I call “uninventable inventions”. These are things we use commonly but never
had the chance to invent ourselves due to their common occurrence in nature.
Examples are: the fluid carrying tube (since arteries would easily be observed
in killed animals), the sphere (think eye balls), or wings to fly with (i.e.
the general shape of a modern jetliner).

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kortilla
Interestingly the wings on a jetliner (and man-made planes in general) don’t
really look anything like wings on birds or insects nor do they function in
the same way.

In fact, one of the big breakthroughs in flight was to stop trying to make
them like birds. Planes fly like birds in the same way that submarines swim
like fish, i.e. they don’t.

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matt-attack
You might be right to 2nd order, but the fact is it's no accident that these
two objects look so similar:

[https://imgur.com/a/dKLQQ2j](https://imgur.com/a/dKLQQ2j)

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caconym_
Even better is the similarity between a bird seen side-on in level gliding
flight and the same view of a B2. I tried to get an image link to put here but
the internet has become impossible to use, so just Google it I guess.

It seems that the biggest difference between bird wings and airplane wings is
that the former use a bell-shaped (per Prandtl) span loading that induces
proverse yaw on on roll and allows them to turn without separate yaw input.
The elliptical span loading used by the vast majority of man-made aircraft
causes adverse yaw, which is probably the biggest reason most aircraft need
rudders. Even the B2 has split-aileron drag rudders at its wingtips for this
reason.

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matt-attack
Wow thanks for that! For anyone being lazy, please take a look:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/dxwi51/b2_ste...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/dxwi51/b2_stealth_bomber_side_view_1015_x_1027/)

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29athrowaway
Crows use cars to crack nuts.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0)

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JordanFarmer
Gulls drop oysters from up high to break them open (using the rock as a tool).
Aren't they seabirds too?

