Study
Discovery of species-wide tool use in the Hawaiian crow
Rutz, Christian; Klump, Barbara C.; Komarczyk, Lisa; Leighton, Rosanna; Kramer, Joshua
Nature, 2016
Nearly every surviving Hawaiian crow was given tasks requiring a stick to extract food from crevices in a log, with juveniles tested separately from adults.
- Studied in
- Corvus hawaiiensis
- Sample size
- 104 ʻalalā (Hawaiian crows) in the conservation breeding populationEffectively the entire surviving species at the time.
The great majority of adults used tools proficiently, and juveniles developed the behaviour without being taught, indicating a species-wide predisposition rather than an individually learned trick.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Tool use is species-typical in the Hawaiian crow, making it the second corvid known to use tools habitually.
How NatureHQ reads it
Two things make this unusual. First, the sample was essentially the whole species, because the ʻalalā is extinct in the wild. Second, it shows corvid tool use evolving more than once, which is why researchers look at island ecology rather than at "crow intelligence" in general for an explanation.
- Every bird tested was in a conservation breeding programme, so natural context is absent.
- The species is extinct in the wild; wild behaviour can no longer be observed for comparison.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
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.