Offensive Squid

hey! Not Rocket Science has a post about New Caledonian crows. :)

Fishing for fat: why learning to use tools is worth it for the New Caledonian crow

Definitely check out the movie. cool stuff. good close up of a grub inside of a log being poked by a stick. The crows try to get the grub to bite the stick.

Rutz found that the grubs provide the crows with about as much protein as all the other sources, but they contribute almost half of the fat in the birds’ diet. On average, the crows eat just under two grubs a day, and Rutz calculated that they would only need 3 to meet their entire energy needs.
This shows that an enterprising crow gets tremendous benefits from investing the time and effort it takes to use tools properly. Indeed, young crows can spend years fiddling with their tools to no avail. It’s an unrewarding period, but it eventually pays off.

The presence of such an untapped source of energy may have spurred the evolution of the New Caledonian crow’s tool-making prowess. But Rutz thinks that early humans may have inadvertently nudged this process along. On New Caledonia, beetle grubs burrow into the logs of decaying candlenut trees, but these trees were only introduced to the island by prehistoric humans. The trees also provide nuts – the second most important source of fats and proteins for the crow. Rutz suggests that this sudden influx of nutrients might have been a key event in the evolution of one of the world’s smartest birds

If any of you ever have the chance to get one of the stamps from New Caledonia with the crows on it, please mail me a card!