Alice MI Auersperg1, Birgit Szabo1, Auguste MP von Bayern2, 3, and Alex Kacelnik2

摘要: Accounts of complex tool innovations in animals, particularly in species not adaptively specialized for doing so, are exceedingly rare and often linked to advanced cognitive abilities in the physical domain [1], even though the relation between such capabilities and intelligence is poorly understood [2]. For this reason, discoveries of such capabilities transcend anecdotal value and contribute significantly to comparative cognition [3–5]. Among birds, there are several reports of tool innovations in corvids, but very few documented records in other families (for example [1, 3–7]). Here, we report a case of spontaneous tool innovation in the Goffin’s cockatoo (Cacatua goffini), a species endemic to the Tanimbar archipelago in Indonesia. Like most corellas, they live in social groups (~ 10–100) in tropical dry forests, roost in simple tree holes, and feed mainly on a seed based diet (which occasionally causes interference with agriculture)[8]. There are no records of tool-related behavior in the wild. We report how a captive male named Figaro successfully, reliably and repeatedly made and used stick-type tools to rake in food, manufacturing them from two different materials and displaying different steps and techniques.During apparently playful explorations, Figaro inserted a stone pebble through the aviary wire mesh, where it fell on a structural wooden beam. After attempting to reach the pebble with his claw, he went away, fetched a piece of bamboo, returned, and used it to fish (unsuccessfully) for the stone, adjusting the movement of the functional tool-end to the movement of the pebble. To follow this serendipitous observation we