Transcript
CHRIS PACKHAM
– open on the road. These birds are then carrying it to the Armco here, where there are small depressions, man-made cuts in it. And they’re using these as a vice to stop the nut from rolling around whilst they access the fruit on the inside of it. Now, that strikes me as pretty clever. But the question is, of course, just how clever are these birds?
To find out, I’ve come to visit Dr Alex Taylor at his field aviary here on the island. To study how these birds solve problems, he’s put a tasty morsel of food deep in a container. He’s testing whether they can work out how to reach it using a variety of objects he’s placed in the aviary. But first, he’s trying his puzzle out on me.
ALEX TAYLOR
Imagine that you’re a crow. Here’s your food in a deep hole. How would you go about, with the tools available to you on this table, solving this problem?
CHRIS PACKHAM
This is part of it, obviously.
ALEX TAYLOR
Mm-hmm.
CHRIS PACKHAM
At my disposal, I’ve a short stick on a piece of string, three stones inside the cages, and a longer stick trapped in a box, which means then that the crow is going to use this stick to get the stones out of there.
ALEX TAYLOR
Absolutely.
CHRIS PACKHAM
Next, the crow needs to drop the stones onto a trap door to release the long stick. It’s going to need all three stones. And then it probably will drop that one out. Excellent. And using this long stick, it’ll finally be able to reach the food.
This is a tough one. Alright. Can I stay in here?
ALEX TAYLOR
Absolutely. You can sit and watch. And we’ll see what happens.
CHRIS PACKHAM
Right. Come on, then. Send in your mastermind, because it’s going to need that.
Alex studies wild birds which he releases after three months of research. This one is nicknamed ‘007’. And it’s about to attempt what Alex believes is one of the most complex tests of the animal mind ever constructed.
The bird is familiar with the individual objects. But this is the first time he’s seen them arranged like this. Eight separate stages that must be completed in a specific order if the puzzle is to be solved. And if the bird succeeds, it’ll be a world first.
He takes time to have a look and then starts with the short stick. Stage one. He finds it’s too short to reach the food.
He then sets off to get the first stone.
But he drops it.
And another. He seems to be stuck.
But then something seems to click.
He deploys the first stone.
And then another.
Got it! The eighth and final stage.
Success. Eight individual stages of one complex puzzle completed.
That was remarkable. I’ve never ever seen anything like it. Of all of the bird behaviour that I’ve seen, nothing matches that. I can hardly believe it.
I’m still just running that sequence through my mind. It happened really quickly. But the immediate question is, of course, how on earth did that crow do that?
You see, on the face of it, the crow’s problem-solving –