Tool Use in Animals

Tool Use in Animals
Author: Crickette M. Sanz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1107328373

The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the behaviours exhibited by the great apes. Excavations of the nut cracking sites of chimpanzees have been dated to around 4-5 thousand years ago. Tool Use in Animals collates these and many more contributions by leading scholars in psychology, biology and anthropology, along with supplementary online materials, into a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities and environmental forces shaping these behaviours in taxa as distantly related as primates and corvids.

Animal Tool Behavior

Animal Tool Behavior
Author: Robert W. Shumaker
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2011-05-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1421401282

When published in 1980, Benjamin B. Beck’s Animal Tool Behavior was the first volume to catalog and analyze the complete literature on tool use and manufacture in non-human animals. Beck showed that animals—from insects to primates—employed different types of tools to solve numerous problems. His work inspired and energized legions of researchers to study the use of tools by a wide variety of species. In this revised and updated edition of the landmark publication, Robert W. Shumaker and Kristina R. Walkup join Beck to reveal the current state of knowledge regarding animal tool behavior. Through a comprehensive synthesis of the studies produced through 2010, the authors provide an updated and exact definition of tool use, identify new modes of use that have emerged in the literature, examine all forms of tool manufacture, and address common myths about non-human tool use. Specific examples involving invertebrates, birds, fish, and mammals describe the differing levels of sophistication of tool use exhibited by animals.

The Animal Toolkit

The Animal Toolkit
Author: Steve Jenkins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-08
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0358244447

Featuring cut-paper illustrations, this picture book teaches young readers all about what makes a tool a tool--and the remarkable ways animals use them to interact with the world.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Author: Frans de Waal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393246191

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

Use of Laboratory Animals in Biomedical and Behavioral Research

Use of Laboratory Animals in Biomedical and Behavioral Research
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 113
Release: 1988-02-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309038391

Scientific experiments using animals have contributed significantly to the improvement of human health. Animal experiments were crucial to the conquest of polio, for example, and they will undoubtedly be one of the keystones in AIDS research. However, some persons believe that the cost to the animals is often high. Authored by a committee of experts from various fields, this book discusses the benefits that have resulted from animal research, the scope of animal research today, the concerns of advocates of animal welfare, and the prospects for finding alternatives to animal use. The authors conclude with specific recommendations for more consistent government action.

Animal Play

Animal Play
Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1998-06-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521586566

Animal Play, first published in 1998, is an interdisciplinary study of play in animals and humans.

Avian Cognition

Avian Cognition
Author: Carel ten Cate
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2017-06-22
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1107092388

An overview of current research and experimental approaches in avian cognition and how this relates to other species.

Tool Use in Animals

Tool Use in Animals
Author: Crickette M. Sanz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1107011191

Presentation of groundbreaking research on an extensive range of tool using animals, looking particularly at the evolution of cognitive abilities.

Cognition and Tool Use

Cognition and Tool Use
Author: Christopher Baber
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2003-07-24
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781420024203

The ability to use tools is a distinguishing feature of human beings. It represents a complex psychomotor activity that we are only now beginning to comprehend. Robust new theoretical accounts allow us to better understand how people use tools and explain differences in human and animal tool use from the perspective of cognitive science. Our understanding needs to be grounded upon research into how people use tools, which draws upon many disciplines, from ergonomics to anthropology to cognitive science to neuropsychology. Cognition and Tool Use: Forms of Engagement in Human and Animal Use of Tools presents a single coherent account of human tool use as a complex psychomotor activity. It explains how people use tools and how this activity can succeed or fail, then describes the design and development of usable tools. This book considers contemporary tool use in domains such as surgery, and considers future developments in human-computer interfaces, such as haptic virtual reality and tangible user interfaces. No other single text brings together the research from the different disciplines, ranging from archaeology and anthropology to psychology and ergonomics, which contribute to this topic. Graduate students, professionals, and researchers will find this guide to be invaluable.