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Diver Snaps First Photo of Fish Using Tools
sciencehabit writes with this excerpt from Science: "While exploring Australia's Great Barrier Reef, professional diver Scott Gardner heard an odd cracking sound and swam over to investigate. What he found was a footlong blackspot tuskfish holding a clam in its mouth and whacking it against a rock. Soon the shell gave way, and the fish gobbled up the bivalve, spat out the shell fragments, and swam off. Fortunately, Gardner had a camera handy and snapped what seem to be the first photographs of a wild fish using a tool." (Not everyone agrees that this constitutes tool use, says the article, in part because the "tool" isn't something that the fish can actually manipulate.)
I for one welcome our new fish overlords.
Isn't every camera technically a tool? Diver have used cameras all the time!
Oohhh, the fish using a tool. :P
Diver Snaps First Photo of Fish Using Tools
A camera?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
That whole scene with the monkeys is gonna need some MAJOR rewriting...
IIRC I've read (several years ago) about a fish that uses a leaf as cover to avoid being seen/caught by for example hungry birds (was it in south america? Amazonas?). But then again, I don't know if this either can be categorized as tool use. I mean, swimming under something isn't that difficult...
(hint, its in the elephant's trousers)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Smart.
ask my wife
Fish should begin receiving catalogs from Harbor Freight in the mail any day now.
Have gnu, will travel.
A fish beat the crap out of a clam by hitting it against a rock? I'm not quite sure this qualifies as "tool" use. Now, grabbing the rock, and beating clam with it, or using it to pry open the clam... that would sound more "tool-like."
if only they had lasers!!
it's a sort of 2001 moment, right?
that is all
I'm still waiting for the photo of the fish on the bicycle so that I an get back to my ex about all those presents she claimed weren't useful...
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
This is retarded. I have a melanarus wrasse (same family as tusks, Labridae) that, on a regular basis, picks up snails and bashes then against the rocks in the tank or the glass. It's a well known behavior in the reefkeeping community, too, which makes me wonder what kind of research he did before going "First pic!".
1) Mankind decides we are special and better than all other creatures.
2) Man makes list of things that support that belief (language, tools, cultivation, etc.)
3) Man discovers animals do things on the list (language, tools, cultivation, etc.) [Octopus tool use, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoWdHOtlrk ]
4) Man is amazed that animal has "human quality"
Dolphins talk, ants take other ant species as slaves, mantis preys. Whatever. Let's just write a new list, like "can program a VCR" and start over.
Gently reply
If the rock doesn't qualify as a tool, then just how would you qualify a blacksmith's anvil, and how well would he function without it?
Wow... give them a little while longer and they'll figure out how to make fire.
Aaaaand.... there's more to this great revelation, right?
Anyone ever heard of an aquarium? They are transparent vessels that hold water with the intent of providing habitation for domestic fishes. One of the benefits operating one is you can observe fish building nests out of gravel, plants and stones, interacting with other fishes and, oh my yes, even beating a crayfish on a rock so it will desist pinching the fish's nose. I guess I should have taken a picture and gotten on /. front page.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
(a) they're artifacts and (b) they're used either by bringing the stuff to be hammered to them or moving them to the stuff to be hammered.
That the tuskfish may bring the clams to the rocks from other locations to be opened on the rocks speaks to the rocks intentionally being used by tools. But if it turns out that the rocks just happen to be convenience, that suggests that it may not be intentional tool use, e.g. the tuskfish may bang the clams against all surfaces and just happen to notice the sound when hitting it against a rock and continue to do so.
Mr Tuskfish had finally had enough of the rock mocking him. In a fit of frustrated rage he picked up a clam and beat the rock mercilessly. Sadly the clam broke before the rock so the dejected Mr Tuskfish ate the bits of clam and slunk off while the rock continued to mock him.
Otters whack shellfish against rocks they put on their stomachs while they float on the surface. They have hands to carry the rock around and need to breath air. Fish don't have hands but can breath underwater. Seems like the fish adapted. What would you do without arms and legs?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah, the fish probably seen a squid do it first.
(just using wikipedia, because I'm that lazy:)
An object that has been modified to fit a purpose' or 'An inanimate object that one uses or modifies in some way to cause a change in the environment, thereby facilitating one's achievement of a target goal'.
—Hauser, 2000
an object carried or maintained for future use
—Finn, Tregenza, and Norman, 2009.
The fish deliberately uses the rock to change the clam from an unopened to an opened state. This allows it to eat the clam, which was presumably the fish's 'target goal,' and thereby satisfies the first definition. The fish also had to carry the unopened clam, expecting that it would be able to open the clam to access its contents. This demonstrates future planning and satisfies the second definition of a "tool." In either case the fish seems to have recognized that "clam" and "rock" can be combined to achieve a goal which is impossible when the fish is presented with only "clam" or "rock" individually. The fish also seems to have been able to perform an ordered sequence of steps, which demonstrates a surprising degree of cognition.
Conversely neither definition would allow you to define "walking on the ground" as tool use, since the ground is not used as a means to modify the environment and the ground is not carried for future use.
Am I the only one wondering who the Tools are that are using the fish?
>> "A fish beat the crap out of a clam by hitting it against a rock? I'm not quite sure this qualifies as "tool" use. Now, grabbing the rock, and beating clam with it, or using it to pry open the clam... that would sound more "tool-like.""
From: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=tool [thefreedictionary.com]
"4. Something used in the performance of an operation; an instrument: ..." ..."
or
"4. (Engineering / Tools) anything used as a means of performing an operation or achieving an end
Show me any law or Engineering definition, standard, etc... that states or in any way requires the "Tool" to be held, or otherwise used against the material.
Seems to me it is no different than the Oyster shuckers at the Union Oyster House in Boston that have a cobblestone in the sink. They put the knife in the hinge of the oyster, then hold both vertically, and bring both down rapping the handle of the knife onto the cobblestone thereby forcing the knife into the oyster. Both the cobblestone and the knife are both "Tools", IMHO.
http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/Ruq91rmQNweZ78TzKylQMg?select=lOXM-kwLvrWp6zxw3KEKJg [yelp.com]
The article talks about controversy as to whether this is Tool use, but the original researcher says that most tool definitions that require that the tool be movable (a rock used to open a hard nut for example) don't allow for the fact that moving a rock through water is usually quite slow, and the fact that fish don't have prehensile fins, only their mouths. For a fish, whacking something against something else to get it open is probably quite up there on the scale of advanced thinking. If a fish tries to pick up a rock and hit a clam with it, the rock is going to be limited by the fish's mouth size, and they probably won't be able to get up enough momentum. The clam however is quite a bit a bit easier to get up some momentum with, certainly enough to crack it's shell.
On the contrary.
Octopusses have been observed, for some years now, to drop rocks into clam shells to jam them open and make for an easier kill. That is abstract, reasoning behaviour.
At least we know now, that if we finally wipe our kind out somehow (nuclear war, disaster, climate change, etc), the planet has capable candidates to take over our place, rule the planet, and somehow destroy it again at one point. Cool. Well, as far as we have oceans left that are habitable.
More about the article: isn't the spitting fish using a tool to catch airborne prey? Water balls? (or is it fish spit technically?)
and also read more....
this is another addition to the long list of animals using tools. OF COURSE it isn't "something a fish can manipulate"
that is because no fish has HANDS, see?
such a statement just shows you can have a mouth and no brain
the most famous example of tool use are among the fangouli chimps (worth googling for videos)
they actually make and use spears, and have ~5000 year archaeological data to show this. very cool.
even the simplest human can relate to this...
but if it is not on human terms, many lack cognitive capacity to see something as a tool.
example of tools used without even touching them? various birds use gravity to crack open shells, kill their prey with little risk, etc.
some will say birds don't have hands, and gravity is not a tool.
yet NASA (you know--the space people?) uses this to enhance velocity routinely--they just use a special trajectory (read more complex hammer swing) to intentionally miss the surface of the gravitational body
So a randomly found stick on the ground being used as a back scratcher would not be a tool, but a stick that was artificially modified from its original condition (either explicitly removed from the tree, or one that was found, but specifically pruned so that excess branches and leaves are removed, for instance, to make it more usable) would.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I've seen fish drop rocks on sea-urchins to break them. I'd say that qualifies as tool use.
Poor ol' timothy is desperately struggling for stuff from his beloved Australia to post.
Thank FUCK the weekend is almost done and we won't be spammed for another week.
Is there a video clip? I want to see it in action!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
intelligence to any degree should be respected, especially in animals.....as we make this world barren to other species, it is sad to see there is plenty of intelligent life out there, and that even if you consider the fact that memory is needed to remember this technique (citing that fish do have memory) and that intelligence is needed to know when enough cracking has been made to get through....and not just keep cracking away infinitely....i am impressed at life in general, and appalled by our fingerprint on this world as it destroys all these intelligent creatures ....
Anvil is a tool as well, right?
It matters if you use it or not, not that how you use it.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
how do you want to "manipulate" anything when you are a fish ? manipulating anything requires hands