Clever Corvids: unique beaks for tool use (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 17, 2016, 13:14 (3173 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The finding that New Caledonian have a unique beak raises the old chicken/egg problem, beak first or tools first or saltation, both together:
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-unique-beak-evolved-tool-caledonian.html-QUOTE: "The question that cannot be answered is why the crows started using tools in the first place. It may have been a matter of chance because most birds do just fine foraging with their beaks and feet without resorting to tool-making, McGowan said."-David's comment: McGowan's point is the NC crows have a non-required phenotypic change. Why did it happen, or was it given?-It just doesn't seem to occur even to those people who study these birds, and know how intelligent they are, that these crows might have started using tools because some particularly clever one(s) devised a new method of getting to a nosh. And when it worked, as with all successful inventions, it caught on. Not “required”, not “given”, but simply an intelligent innovation for the purpose of improvement. And once it caught on, suitable adjustments took place to make the method even more efficient. Or are you now going to tell us that your God had to instruct these particular crows to use tools because otherwise nature would have been unbalanced and humans could never have appeared or been fed?