Island of the tool users
Many Minds
Tool use is rare in the animal kingdom—but maybe not as rare as we once thought. Since Jane Goodall famously observed a chimpanzee fishing for termites, many new examples of animals using tools have come to light. Birds using sticks to forage for grubs. Sea otters using rocks to smash open mussels. Digger wasps using stones to close off their burrows. But as these examples mount, so do the scientific questions. What is tool use, really? What different forms does it take? Does it always imply a high degree of intelligence? And perhaps the biggest question of all: Why do some creatures use...
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Cognitive offloading and its consequences
Many Minds
For thousands of years—maybe for as long as we've been human—we've offloaded our thinking. We've counted on our fingers. We've carved tallies into bone. We've invented a long series of tools to help us reason, remember, and manage information—tools like abacuses, calendars, writing systems, calculators, smartphones, and many, many more. So cognitive offloading is hardly new—but the questions around it seem newly urgent. As cognitive technologies accumulate, as opportunities for offloading tempt us at every turn, as headlines warn of "digital dementia" and "cognitive surrender," it...
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Coming of age in Ngogo
Many Minds
It's a familiar story in many ways. A child is born, and for years afterward is adored and indulged and anchored to home and family. But then the child grows up and starts crossing that long threshold into adulthood. The transition proves—to say the least—a bit turbulent. Now when I say this story is familiar, I don't just mean familiar to us as human beings. After all, a similar story has long played out among our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. My guest today is . Rachna co-directs the longstanding in Uganda and is an incoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of...
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The natural history of linguistic diversity
Many Minds
Thousands of languages are used around the world today, and this linguistic diversity is a precious part of our human heritage. But it's also more than that. Linguistic diversity provides clues—a vast crazy quilt of clues—about how language works, about how history has unfolded, about the dynamics of culture, and about the nature of the human mind. My guest today is . Damián is an based at the at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Over the last decade or so, Damián’s emerged as one of the most innovative researchers in the study of language and linguistic diversity. He’s...
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From the archive: Electric ecology
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're still taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back at the end of August—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired September 19, 2024] There's a bit of a buzz out there, right now, but maybe you haven’t noticed. It's in the water, it's in the air. It's electricity—and it's all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of reality. But many other creatures are—and scientists are starting to take note. My guest today...
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From the archive: Varieties of childhood
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired July 10, 2025] Childhood is a special time, a strange time. Children are adored and catered to—they're given their own menus and bedrooms. They're considered delicate and precious, and so we cushion them from every imaginable risk. Kids are encouraged to play, of course—but very often it's under the watchful eye of anxious adults. This, anyway, is how childhood looks in much of the United States today. But is this the way childhood...
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From the archive: Philosophers on psychedelics
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We will be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired May 14, 2025] Some call it the "psychedelic renaissance." In the last decade or so, interest in psychedelic drugs has surged—and not just among Silicon Valley types and psychiatrists and neuroscientists. It's also surged among a stereotypically soberer crowd: academic philosophers. The reasons are clear. With their varied and sometimes transformative effects, psychedelics raise ethical questions, epistemological questions,...
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The origins of Darwin's ideas
Many Minds
No discipline, no sphere of intellectual life, has been untouched by the work of Charles Darwin. He died in 1882 but his ideas are very much alive; they're now central to how we understand the natural world, the human mind, non-human minds, plants, biogeography, morality and emotion, culture, language, and more. But where did his ideas come from? How did they grow out of his travels, his social circle, his hobbies, his particular cast of mind? My guest today is . Janet is Professor Emerita at Harvard University in the department of the History of Science. She is perhaps best known for...
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The sparkling deep
Many Minds
It’s tempting to see bioluminescence as an oddity, one of those rare eccentricities of life on earth. And, on land, maybe that’s true. But our planet is mostly water, and out in the open ocean bioluminescence is utterly commonplace. Creatures of all shapes and sorts sparkle and glow, glitter and pulse. But what are these displays for? Why did they evolve? How did light become the currency of the deep? My guest today is . Sönke is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Duke University, where he and his research group study the visual ecology of the ocean. He’s the author of...
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Is Man the Hunter just a myth?
Many Minds
There's a story about of our past that you know well. It goes like this: At some point earlier in human evolution, we started to hunt. Men in particular—perhaps channeling some deep-seated aggressive impulses—began to seek out big game. This new food source, this bonanza of calories, was what allowed our brains to expand. It changed our bodies and our societies and sent our species off on a whole new track. In short, Man the Hunter made us human. This story—told in different versions, with different points of emphasis—has circulated for decades. It's been debunked and revived, rejected...
info_outlineTool use is rare in the animal kingdom—but maybe not as rare as we once thought. Since Jane Goodall famously observed a chimpanzee fishing for termites, many new examples of animals using tools have come to light. Birds using sticks to forage for grubs. Sea otters using rocks to smash open mussels. Digger wasps using stones to close off their burrows. But as these examples mount, so do the scientific questions. What is tool use, really? What different forms does it take? Does it always imply a high degree of intelligence? And perhaps the biggest question of all: Why do some creatures use tools while so many others don't?
My guest today is Dr. Alice Auersperg. Alice is a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. She and her lab study innovation, technical cognition, and tool use in animals—especially in a species of parrot known as the Goffin's cockatoo.
Here, Alice and I talk about her lab's recent work with a certain remarkable cow. We discuss the wide variation in definitions of tool use across studies, and why some kinds of tool use are perhaps more impressive than others. We walk through some of her lab's most striking findings about tool use in the Goffin's cockatoo: for example, the finding that these birds don't just use tools but also make them—and can make the same tool out of different materials; the finding that they learn to use tools from others; and the finding that they recognize in some way the value of tools. We dig into some of Alice's ideas about the big picture—why certain species use tools, and why so many tool users seem to live on islands. Along the way, Alice and I talk about whether tool use in birds is fundamentally different from tool use in primates; we talk about play and boldness; the allure of the sea mango; intrinsic motivation to combine objects; why tool use differs in captivity, at least in Great Apes; and why Goffin's cockatoos like to dunk their noodles in blueberry soy yogurt.
Before we get to it, a brief announcement. We've been steadily expanding the ways you can engage with us. We recently revived our newsletter, in the form of a Substack. And our episodes are now up on YouTube (albeit in audio-only format, for the time being). And of course you can still find us on Spotify, LinkedIn, and on Bluesky. You are warmly encouraged to subscribe to us or follow us on any and all of these channels. And maybe this goes without saying but we do like hearing from you—so please do leave us a comment!
Alright friends, without further ado, on to my interview with Dr. Alice Auersperg. Enjoy!
Notes
3:30 – The recent study by Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró and Dr. Auersperg on Veronika the cow’s flexible tool use; a video about the findings. Dr. Auersperg’s book on innovation in animals (in German).
9:30 – We discussed gifted word-learning dogs in a recent episode.
11:00 – A paper on tool use in digger wasps. A paper on “anting” in birds. A paper on macaques’ use of human hair as dental floss.
18:00 – The chapter by Fragaszy and Mangalam in which the concept of “tooling” was introduced. For a discussion of this framework by Dr. Auersperg and colleagues, see here.
23:00 – A recent discussion by Jen Colbourne and Dr. Auersperg, which touches on the (somewhat outdated) idea that avian and primate tool use are quite different.
25:00 – For more on tool use in New Caledonian crows, see our (much) earlier episode with Alex Taylor.
30:00 – An example of Dr. Auersperg’s early work with kea.
34:00 – The study by Dr. Auersperg and team describing the innovation of tool use by the cockatoo named Figaro.
38:00 – A follow-up study on social learning of tool use. A follow-up study showing that Goffin’s cockatoos can make the same tool from different materials (video abstract).
47:00 – A study showing that Goffin’s cockatoos will (learn to) safekeep their tools.
50:00 – The study from Dr. Auersperg’s lab documenting the use of “tool sets” in wild Goffin’s cockatoos (video abstract).
58:00 – For more on the origins and drivers of tool use across species, see this recent discussion by Jen Colbourne and Dr. Auersperg.
1:02:00 – A paper by Jean-Baptiste Leca and a colleague about object play and its relation to tool use.
1:04:00 – A paper discussing how tool use differs in captivity in primates.
1:05:00 – The study of noodle flavoring behavior in Goffin’s cockatoos by Jeroen Stephan Zewald and Dr. Auersperg (video abstract).
1:09:00 – For an initial discussion of island ecology and its effects on tool use, by Dr. Auersperg and a colleague, see here. Dr. Auersperg’s fuller treatment of the island effect remains to be published.
1:19:00 – A study of tool use in sea otters.
1:22:00 – The book Delicious by Rob Dunn (former guest) and Monica Sanchez.
Recommendations
A Bird’s IQ, by Louis Lefebvre
Animal Tool Behavior, by Robert W. Shumaker, Kristine R. Walkup, & Benjamin Beck
‘Tooling,’ by Dorothy Fragaszy & Madhur Mangalam
Tile art credit: Photo by Alice Auersperg
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd.
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