Study
Spontaneous innovation in tool manufacture and use in a Goffin’s cockatoo
Auersperg, Alice M. I.; Szabo, Birgit; von Bayern, Auguste M. P.; Kacelnik, Alex
Current Biology, 2012
A captive Goffin’s cockatoo with no history of tool training was observed after a nut was placed out of reach beyond a barrier. Its behaviour was recorded, and it was subsequently given materials of varying suitability to test whether it would shape them.
- Studied in
- Cacatua goffiniana
- Sample size
- 1 individual cockatoo, with further birds tested for comparisonThe innovating individual, named Figaro, was not trained to use tools.
The bird spontaneously broke splinters from a wooden beam and used them to rake the nut within reach, then repeated and refined the behaviour, adjusting the material it selected and shaped.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Tool manufacture can emerge spontaneously in a species that does not use tools in the wild, suggesting the capacity does not require a species-typical tool-using history.
How NatureHQ reads it
This sits in deliberate tension with the New Caledonian crow work, and NatureHQ keeps both. Goffin’s cockatoos are not tool users in the wild, so an individual inventing a tool shows the ability is not confined to species that have evolved for it. But a single innovating bird is one bird: it says the capacity exists, not that it is typical. Read alongside the Rutz fieldwork, the pair make the real point — that "can an individual invent this?" and "is this what the species normally does?" are different questions, and popular coverage almost always merges them.
- The central observation is of one individual, which cannot establish a species-typical ability.
- Captive birds have time, safety and materials that wild birds do not.
- Whether the bird understood the tool’s function or converged on it by trial and error is not resolved by the design.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.09.002
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.