Insight in Crows
For example, researchers found that a crow was able to create and use tools in a remarkable way (Weir, Chappell, & Kacelnik, 2002). Betty the crow was the crow that created her own tool. Betty’s task was to retrieve a basket with a handle from a tall cylinder. All that Betty had available to retrieve the basket was a straight stick. Betty previously had access to a stick with a hook end, however, she did not have this available this time. Watch the following video to see what she did.
Amazing! After trying to retrieve the basket with the straight stick, she modified her tool to be hooked. She then very easily retrieved the basket.
Another example is that of crow 007. Crow 007 first learned how to perform different task separately. For example, this crow first attempted to reach a piece of meat with a short stick which was too short to reach the meat, learning that the short stick would not function to reach the meat (Taylor, Hunt, & Holzhaider, 2007). The crow then was in several trials in which it used a long stick which was able to reach the meat, in turn, the crow learned that a long stick reached the food it wanted. In this same way, the crow was in trials or tasks in which it learned that it could retrieve rocks from the wooden box with the small stick. However, the crow never learned to do any of these in any order.
In the video, then, we can see that the crow was given a short stick, and from previous experience, it knew that stick would not work to retrieve the meat. However, in the video, we also see the crow very easily goes from one step to the other. We also see that at one point, the crow drops one stone and gets another stone. After this, the crow seems to be stuck for just a few seconds. Then, suddenly, the crow realizes that it can use the stones to get the longer stick out of the box. This moment here is insight. As defined earlier, insight consists of a sudden production of adaptive response. The crow is adapting the information that it learned of the sticks independently from each other from the previous tasks. This is not simply learned behavior, the crow is showing insight. Wyne and Udell would argue against the argument that this is simply showing a learning of behavior (Wyne & Udell, 2013) because it had to be able to understand that one action would lead to the next.
To put it in a human perspective that we can relate to, think about a time when you had to use knowledge from different places and situations and combine it in order to make something work. Maybe, when as a young kid, you were playing with a ball and it rolled under a car and your short arms could not reach it. Either you went inside your house and grabbed the broom or you tried using your legs to reach for the ball. In either case, you knew that your arms were too short to reach the ball and that you required something longer to reach it. Of course the broom is much longer that your arm and you processed thinking that the longer broom would help more than your arm. However, you were not trained to get balls from under cars with brooms. You simply had the previous experience and knowledge that the broom was longer and therefore would get the ball out.
This shows insight in that these two crows had previous knowledge that helped them problem solve. In both cases, the crows modified the knowledge that they already possessed in order to create something that would help them with the new task at hand.
References
Taylor, A. H., Hunt, G. R., Holzhaider, J. C., & Gray, R. D. (2007). Spontaneous metatool use by
Weir, A. A., Chappell, J., & Kacelnik, A. (2002). Shaping of hooks in New Caledonian crows.
Science, 297, 981.
Wynne, C. D. L., & Udell, M. A. R. (2013). Animal cognition: Evolution, behavior and cognition
(2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
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