Cockatoos learn carpentry skills from peers

Learned tool use has been demonstrated in a species of bird for the first time, in a study undertaken by a team of European scientists. A batch of Goffin's cockatoos learned how to use a stick to poke nuts through a grid cage by watching a role model perform the task. Some of the birds then developed their own superior tool-making techniques, causing researchers to believe that they were displaying social acquisition of tool use, previously unseen in birds. Jim Drury reports. Credit to Reuters.