Several years ago, we introduced Ars readers to Figaro, a precocious male Goffin’s cockatoo kept in captivity and cared for by scientists in the “Goffin lab” at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Figaro showed a surprising ability to manipulate single tools to maneuver a tasty nut out of a box. Other cockatoos who repeatedly watched Figaro’s performance were also able to do so. Now, Figaro and his cockatoo cronies are back, having learned how to combine tools—in this case, the stick and a ball—to play a rudimentary form of “golf, ” according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.
As Ars’ Science Editor John Timmer explained within 2012 , tool use was once thought to be one of the defining features of humans, but examples of it were eventually observed in primates plus other mammals. Then birds had been observed using tools in the particular wild, although this behavior was limited to the corvids (crows in addition to jays). Parrots, in contrast, have mostly been noted for their linguistic skills, and there has only been limited evidence that they use anything resembling a new tool in the wild. Primarily, they seem to use external objects to position nuts while feeding.
Then along came Figaro. Figaro has been playing with a stone 1 day in the Goffin Lab at the University of Vienna’s Department of Cognitive Biology, led by Alice Auersperg. He accidentally dropped the stone behind some sort of metal divider.
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