Cockatoo Manufactures, Uses Tools

grrlscientist writes with news of a cockatoo named Figaro, who was observed to construct and use his own tools to retrieve objects that were outside of his cage. Quoting: "One day, a student caregiver noticed Figaro pushing a stone pebble through the aviary wire mesh, where it fell on a wood structural beam. Unable to retrieve the stone with his foot, Figaro then fetched a piece of bamboo and again attempted to retrieve the stone using the bamboo stick. ... During the next three days, the researchers ran trials of the original scenario, which was repeated ten times but substituting a cashew nut for the pebble. All trials were captured on video and the process of tool manufacture and use was documented photographically. ... 'Figaro made a new tool for every nut we placed there and each time the bird was successful in obtaining it,' reports cognitive biologist Alice Auersperg of the University of Vienna, who led the study (PDF). During these trials, Figaro used 10 tools, nine of which he manufactured and one of which was ready-made."

Comments

Majority may not even have "souls"

[zidium]

This "Quick-Programmable NPC" is what a lot of spiritualists would term "a soul".

There's a particular line of thought (and scientific study! See: Eric Pepin) that hypothesizes that what pratically every awake, Quick-Programmable NPC people generally reference as their "soul" is really an evolutionary epiphenomenon / emergent property that just started emerging in the species in the last 10,000-50,000 years ago, at least in the genius class.

It further states that while it has a very real biological component (certain gene combinations are apparently *required* to be *born* with this "soul state" (or quick-programmable, as you put it), it is mostly a psychological / noetic characteristic, a sort of linguistically-programmable memetic virus.

The more Quick NPCs such as ourselves interact with other animals (especially humans), the more those other entities develop their own "soulness". The effect is that even completely biologically-unique adopted children and pets will seem to develop "soulness" based upon their age (younger the better) and duration and intensity of their enmeshment with "soulful" entities.

This spread of "humanizing characteristics" has been quite dramatically and very frequently observed in most domesticated species of all types, including a wide range of mammals and birds (esp. primates, canines, and felines). The critical point where the process cements in the entity is with their neurolinguistic recognition of their own "name" (or arbitrary identity reference).

There is a serious and ongoing research into this field, mainly by cutting edge linguists and neurologists. Most keep it under wraps for fear of ridicule from the mainstream scientific society, but that's how cutting edge stuff has always gone for millennia now.