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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

No hands, no problem: clever parrots craft and wield tools

The Goffin’s cockatoo joins chimpanzees and others in the small club of animals that can make implements.
Goffin’s cockatoo

Who’re you calling a bird brain? Some wild Goffin’s cockatoos can make a tool kit and put it to work to access tasty treats. Credit: Lynn M. Stone/Nature Picture Library/Alamy

Parrots are smart and social, and their parents care for them for a long time — all characteristics shared with tool-using primates. Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana), medium-sized parrots native to Indonesia, are known to create and use tools in captivity, but Mark O’Hara and Berenika Mioduszewska at the University of Vienna and their colleagues wanted to know if they also do so in the wild.

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Nature 597, 155 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02381-1

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