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Tool-Making Crows

quisling76 · 942.2K views · 2006-09-09 · 0:41

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Overview

A one-minute clip of the New Caledonian crow Betty bending a straight wire into a hook to retrieve food from a tube. It comes from a 2002 Science study on tool-making in crows.

On Hacker News

HN links it as the clearest demonstration that crows can fashion tools.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2009–2016

Topics

Animals & natureConsciousness & cognition
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crowstool makinganimal cognitionnew caledonian crowexperiment

What people said

abruzzi · 2016-07 · Reference

This is not nearly as complex a sequence, but has a bit of tool making. Specifically, bending a wire into a hook to retrieve food: [VIDEO]

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quadrangle · 2015-02 · Reference

bullshit. Perhaps you don't understand that crows use tools. [VIDEO] and that they also are social and communicate with each other. They do give gifts to each other as part of courtship. We don't need to anthropomorphize to recognize plain facts about crows being intelligent and intentional and social.

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branden · 2009-08 · Reference

Similar: [VIDEO] A crow, given food in a thin cylinder and a piece of wire, bends the wire into a hook and pulls the food out.

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Sources

Video by quisling76, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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