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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
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)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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."
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!".
First photo evidence of tool-using fish
If there was ambiguity before (and I'm not saying there was), your suggestion does nothing to remove it. It could still be describing a situation where the diver's camera is (for some reason) being pointed out as a tool.
My point was that not only is the perceived ambiguity stupid but that there's almost no way to completely solve it. Language can be ambiguous at times, and there's not a whole lot anyone can do about it. Get over it.
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'
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 ....