[MD] The Brilliant Betty and the shiftless, good-for-nothing Abel

[MarshaV]

"Betty the Caledonian crow is being studied by Oxford University's Behavioral Ecology Research Group along with her male lab-mate, Abel. Crows and Ravens are known to be smart birds. In the wild, Caledonian crows do use tools; they will strip the leaves from twigs and then use the sticks to poke into holes and spear grubs. They also make tools from their own molted feathers (basically in the same manner as the twigs) and by tearing cardboard or bark into strips and using them as scrapers.   

Then Betty did something scientists hadn't seen before - she designed a tool from a piece of wire so she could solve a problem - pull a bucket of food out of a tube-shaped container. She did this by taking a straight wire, jamming it into a crack at the base of the container, then pulled it to the side several times until it made a hook. This is pretty damn brilliant, if I do say so myself. It makes her the first animal, other than a human, that has shown a clear understanding of cause and effect, and the skill to create a tool for that specific task. Not even chimpanzees, our closest cousins, have been seen to create a tool from scratch.  "

And what about Abel???  


http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Science/Betty.html