Tag Archives: puzzly animals

Birdbrains Are Starting to Look Pretty Good Right Now…

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If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve no doubt noticed that one of our favorite topics is puzzle-solving animals. In the past, we’ve discussed examples of puzzle solving in cats, dogs, crows, cockatoos, octopuses, bees, pigs, and squirrels.

You probably noticed we’ve got two types of birds on that list already. The more we learn about birds, the more they add to their puzzly resumes.

For instance, did you know that sulphur-crested cockatoo parrots in Australia are teaching each other how to open trash bin lids in order to grab snacks. It’s not all that different from the birds that raided milk containers in Britain a century ago. Many birds learned quickly from their more clever brethren.

As for crows, they’re probably the puzzly kings of birddom.

There was a famous study about a crow named Betty, who would bend pieces of wire in order to obtain food.

Originally, Betty was treated as a genius, only for scientists to later discover that many other crows also have a penchant for making tools and figuring out innovative solutions to problems.

The story of Betty no doubt inspired another study, which tested both the puzzle solving wits and social skills of crows.

There were two crows gathered from different locations with no discernable previous connection. On a table, the scientists placed two pieces of wire — a hooked piece of wire and a straight piece of wire. Each crow had a bottle with meat inside. The crows could see each other, but each had to solve the problem separately. Each crow grabbed one of the two wires.

There are differing accounts of this study, and I couldn’t track down the original. Some say the straight wire was the only way to get the food out, others the hooked wire.

[Image courtesy of Royal Society Publishing.]

In the end, the result was the same. During the first test, only one crow could get the food.

Scientists ran the test a second time, expecting the crows to fight for the one wire that allowed the victor to acquire their food.

And yes, both crows went for the same wire.

But not as competitors.

One held the wire in place, the other bent it. They cooperated, without language, so that both could get food.

That is some solid puzzly thinking.

Factor in other studies about crow cooperation (crooperation?) and stories from Japan about crows building decoy nests to distract patrols intended to remove their real nests from city power grids, and you start to wonder whether crows will join Dr. Fill at the next edition of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve heard some stories about puzzle-solving raccoons that I need to follow up on. The menagerie of puzzly animals just grows and grows.

Have you heard any stories about clever creatures that belong on the list of puzzle-solving animals, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you

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Squirreling Away Puzzle-Solving Skills?

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squirrel puzzle wood

[Image courtesy of Southern Highland Guild.]

It was less than two months ago that we discussed whether the problem-solving puzzly skills of pigs were enough to grant them membership in the puzzle-solving creatures club, alongside cats, dogs, crows, cockatoos, octopuses, and bees.

As it turns out, scientists have been studying “can animal x solve puzzles?” for longer than I thought. One academic paper, entitled “How to stay perfect: the role of memory and behavioural traits in an experienced problem and a similar problem,” was published back in July of 2017.

And they concluded that squirrels might be a worthy addition to the pantheon of puzzle solvers.

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According to the scientists involved:

A neophobia test in the generalisation task suggested squirrels perceived the different apparatus as a different problem, but they quickly came to apply the same effective tactics as before to solve the task… Squirrels remembered and emitted task-effective tactics more than ineffective tactics. As a result, they consistently changed from ineffective to effective behaviours after failed attempts at problem-solving.

They went on to cite previous studies involving creatures as varied as monitor lizards, Atlantic cod, spotted hyenas, lions, and goats:

With regard to returning to previously experienced task, selectivity appears to be an important factor in the success of captive lions, Panthera leo, in solving a suspended puzzle box up to 7 months after experiencing it (Borrego and Dowling 2016), in the success of goats, Capra hircus, in solving a two-step food box challenge 10 months after first experiencing it (Briefer et al. 2014)

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One of the main questions they were trying to answer was what role memory was playing in this puzzle-solving. Were they remembering their previous puzzly experience OR re-learning the same tactics a second time, separate from the first test? These were the parameters:

Here, we examined how memory, alongside behavioural traits, contributes to enhance problem-solving efficiency by giving five grey squirrels, firstly a previously experienced task 22 months after they had last experienced it (hereafter, the ‘recall task’), and secondly a task requiring a previously successful action to be performed in a physically different apparatus (hereafter, the ‘generalisation task’).

Nearly two years between the initial solve and the secondary test! That’s a huge chunk of time. As Dan said in the Room Escape Artist article about this study, “22 months! I could probably replay an entire escape room after 22 months and not even notice.”

But that length of time was intentional, given the test subjects involved:

Grey squirrels are also known to have good long-term memory, at least in the spatial domain: they are scatter hoarders that cache thousands of nuts during the autumn (Thompson and Thompson 1980), and they are able to relocate their own caches (Jacobs and Liman 1991) and artificial caches (Macdonald 1997) after long intervals of time.

squirrel puzzle

So, what did they find when they tested Arnold, Leonard, Sarah, Simon, and Suzy in the lab?

In our case, squirrels may pay attention to cues such as the levers that contain hazelnuts to locate which lever to solve. But unlike what has been found in tool-use studies, the use of cues did not develop with increased experience during problem-solving. Squirrels showed an immediate strong preference to contact functional levers rather than non-functional levers, both when they first encountered this puzzle box 22 months prior to this study (Chow et al. 2016) and in the first trial of the recall task. These results imply that squirrels quickly focused their attention on the reward and reward-related components of the apparatus (levers) from their first encounter with the puzzle box.

In short, applying previously learned knowledge makes them far more effective problem-solvers!

Sounds like it’s time to add squirrels to the list.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start researching lions, hyenas, cod, monitor lizards, and any other animal studies cited in the footnotes. Clearly I have catching up to do!

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