New Caledonia Crows Have Shown They Can Do Something Never Before Seen In Animals, Besides Us
New Caledonian crows make tools with a sophistication that arguably surpasses any animal besides ourselves. There are signs crows can learn from each other, and their technology may even be advancing, but researchers have been puzzled how such unsociable animals, lacking in language, can do this. A new study shows that even though Corvus moneduloides are relatively solitary creatures, they are capable of learning new tool-making techniques and applying them from memory in a way never before seen in animals besides ourselves and our ancestors.
Although corvids in general are impressively intelligent birds, New Caledonian crows are something special. The bend twigs and tear leaves to make hooked tools to extract grubs in the wild, and have taken to shaping wire with enthusiasm. If this still doesn't impress you much take a look at this video and ask yourself how many humans could solve a sequential challenge so quickly.
Scientists are puzzled how they acquire some of these skills, since they don't appear to imitate each other, even in captivity. Dr Sarah Jelbert of the University of Auckland has proven that when shown a novel tool, and taught its effectiveness, these crows can learn to fashion something similar from memory. She proposes in Scientific Reports crows learn from watching their parents or by finding tools discarded by others, and sometimes make advances on these, leading to a developing technological sophistication.
Jelbert taught eight crows a trick they would definitely not have evolved in the wild. She created a crow vending machine, which rewarded them with food when they inserted pieces of colored paper (portraits of reigning monarchs or notable persons not required).
More:
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-caledonia-crows-have-shown-they-can-do-something-never-before-seen-in-animals-besides-us/page-2/
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OCTOPUS'S GRASP SURPRISES SCIENTISTS
By Boyce Rensberger
April 24, 1992
The lowly octopus has a surprising intellectual ability, two brain researchers report: It can learn a task simply by watching another octopus do it first.
Learning by observation, which might in this case be described as "octopus see, octopus do," is considered a very advanced form of learning -- one that is possible, some argue, only in a brain almost on the verge of conceptual thought. Such mental capacities have been thought to be reserved to "higher" vertebrates (animals with backbones) such as mammals and not likely in the brains of invertebrates -- like the octopus, which is classified with slugs and clams as a mollusk.
The research was conducted by Graziano Fiorito, a neurobiologist at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy, a major marine biological research center, and Pietro Scotto of the Universita di Reggio Calabria, also in Italy. Their report is published in today's issue of the journal Science.
The octopus's ability to copy a model, the two wrote, is a skill well known in "humans and {other} vertebrates, and it has been considered preliminary to conceptual thought; in this sense it appears related to the cognitive abilities of the animal learning system {of more advanced species}."
Their finding was based on a simple experiment involving Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus found throughout temperate and tropical seas. Like all octopuses, its body is entirely soft. The largest individuals measure 10 feet from the tip of the head to the end of the longest of the eight tentacles.
In the first stage of the experiment, an octopus was trained to swim to one of two differently colored balls placed in their tanks. If the red ball was the "right" one in the experiment and the animal went to the white ball, it received a mild electric shock. But if it went to the red ball, it was rewarded by finding a piece of fish hidden behind the ball.
Once the animal learned to go to the correct ball every time, an untrained octopus was placed in an adjacent tank so that it could watch the first octopus choose between another pair of balls.
The scientists said these "student" observers watched the trained animals closely, their heads and eyes tracking the action as the trained octopus jetted across the tank and wrapped its tentacles around the ball to get the fish.
Octopus eyes, though they evolved completely separately from vertebrate eyes, are structurally similar and can focus at varying distances to provide highly acute vision. The observer octopuses were allowed to see the trained animals perform four times, watching as their neighbors found food and ate it. Then the observers were isolated and given a pair of balls without reward or punishment.
The observers consistently chose the right ball right away, the scientists said, having learned much faster than the human-trained animals, which took an average of 16 trials to learn to go to the red ball consistently and 21 to go to the white.
In the first four trials of the observer animals, by contrast, they scored an average of 86 percent correct when the red ball was the "right" one and 70 percent of the time when the white ball was "right." (Something about red balls, apparently, was more attractive.)
Even when the observer octopuses were tested five days after watching the human-trained animals, they scored about as well.
The finding accords with other research showing that the octopus has the most complex brain of any invertebrate. In some ways, in fact, their brains compare with those of mammals.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/04/24/octopuss-grasp-surprises-scientists/9f705509-b3d6-40bb-95d4-3ae926da7947/
Thanks for mentioning reading about this. It's really interesting! 
Or maybe they are just waiting for a bald eagle to scare the orange one to death?
