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Living psychology: animal minds
Living psychology: animal minds

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5.3 New Caledonian crows

Some of the problem-solving abilities that have been observed in non-mammal species, like the New Zealand kea, seem to provide evidence of executive function – which is involved in the planning and co-ordinating of actions. Now watch this video, which shows a different bird species, the New Caledonian crow, trying to solve a problem. The solution requires planning and co-ordinating eight separate steps.

Download this video clip.Video player: Chris Packham and the New Caledonian crow puzzle
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Transcript: Chris Packham and the New Caledonian crow puzzle

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 –
End transcript: Chris Packham and the New Caledonian crow puzzle
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Activity 8 Pause for thought

Timing: Allow 10 minutes for this activity
  1. Having watched the video, do you think the crow displayed evidence of executive function?
  2. Does the video illustrate any differences between human and animal problem solving?

Discussion

For a human research participant, this level of planning and co-ordination of actions would certainly be considered evidence of executive function, so it would also be reasonable to consider this as evidence of executive function in the crow.

However, the video also demonstrated a key difference between human and animal problem-solving. Chris Packham could work out the solution to the problem on his first attempt at solving it: he already had insight into the nature of the problem without having to explore it in a trial-and-error manner. But the crow had to attempt to use the short stick first, in order to understand that it was not long enough to reach the food. In addition, even though it was only alluded to in the video, the crow had to be trained on each piece of apparatus separately, learning about it by trial and error. The pieces of apparatus were then put together to create the puzzle.

For a long time, psychologists considered the insight into the nature of a problem (that Chris Packham showed in the video) to be uniquely human. This is a conclusion going back to the work of Edward Thorndike in the early twentieth century (e.g. Thorndike, 1911). However, in recent years research findings have emerged which suggest that some other species may also be able to show elements of insight in certain problem-solving situations (see Shettleworth, 2012, for a well-written and accessible summary of this literature).

In the next section of this course you will revisit collaborative problem-solving, looking at the role emotions and empathy play in animals working together.