Scientists seem pretty loathe to hand out the title 'tool using' to animals. The bar is set pretty high. But these rad cephalopods won the prize fair and square. Not only do they collect coconut shells to use as armor, or portable housing -- but they clean them, and move them, and use them when needed. They even store them.
Awesome.
The article is worth a read.
Enjoy watching animals rock it,
Bp
[via My Lovely Wife, photo credit in linked article]
4 comments:
I saw this on the web and thought "wow, I have always heard octopi were smart, never guessed they used tools"....watches vid...."oh, for Christ's sake, it's two halves of a coconut, where the hell is the tool?"
Well they're not forging allen wrenches, but it does qualify to us scientific types LOL.
Well, I consider myself a "scientific type" even if I don't have any fancy paperwork to go along with my belief. But that also means I am not burdened with bullshit parameters,hehe. Chimps using twigs to get to termites? Tool use. Otters cracking open mollusks with stones? Tool use. An octopus picking up coconuts to hide in? well.... I wonder if those coconuts were dropped there by swallows? hmmmm...
African swallows!
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