Add Another Animal to the List of Tool Users: Pigs

Add Another Animal to the List of Tool Users: Pigs

4 years ago
Anonymous $xdcOWPpsb_

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/add-another-animal-to-the-list-of-tool-users-pigs/

Part of the Museum of Natural History in Paris,  the Jardin des Plantes, on the left bank of the Seine River, hosts a collection of galleries and gardens. A couple of miles away, the larger museum also includes the Museum of Mankind, which is in part, an exploration of what it means to be human. There, like in many other museums worldwide, you can view a collection of stone tools used by the earliest humans. Tool use was long believed to be unique to our species—a defining feature, like language. Utilizing objects to achieve goals is not just a demonstration of advanced cognitive capabilities; it is largely through our symbolic and material tools that we share and transmit culture.

In 1960 primatologist Jane Goodall observed wild chimpanzees making and using tools. A connection between humans and other animals, in how we think and learn, was captivating news. Since then, scientists have gone on to establish tool use in a relatively small number of other species. And observations of learning to use a tool from other group members, rather than instinctively, have been even more rare—until now.