We humans pride ourselves on our superior smarts, given our ability to make fire, use tools and subscribe to Netflix. But if other animals could counter that presumption, they might say they’re doing just fine, thank you.
The latest entrant in the animal smarts sweepstakes is the Goffin’s cockatoo. Birds in a laboratory in Vienna deployed both a pointy stick and a straw to extract a cashew from a clear box. They used the stick to poke a hole in a paper barrier erected by the scientists, then the straw to knock the cashew free. When scientists removed the paper barrier, some birds left the pointy stick home, staff writer Erin Garcia de Jesús reports.