Tool Use in Animals
Cognition and Ecology

Presentation of groundbreaking research on an extensive range of tool using animals, looking particularly at the evolution of cognitive abilities.

Crickette M. Sanz (Edited by), Josep Call (Edited by), Christophe Boesch (Edited by)

9781107657434, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 March 2014

324 pages, 52 b/w illus. 7 tables
24.4 x 17 x 1.7 cm, 0.52 kg

'During the half century since Jane Goodall first observed a chimpanzee fashioning and using a tool, there has been great interest and attention to defining, describing, and interpreting tool use among many animal phyla. Whereas some books have catalogued tool use, this volume investigates four behavioral domains - phylogenetic, functional, ontogenetic, and mechanistic … Readers will gain perspective on the interaction of evolutionary and environmental factors shaping tool use behaviour, yet wonder why more animals do not use tools or make better use of them … Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.' J. Burger, Choice

The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the behaviours exhibited by the great apes. Excavations of the nut cracking sites of chimpanzees have been dated to around 4-5 thousand years ago. Tool Use in Animals collates these and many more contributions by leading scholars in psychology, biology and anthropology, along with supplementary online materials, into a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities and environmental forces shaping these behaviours in taxa as distantly related as primates and corvids.

List of contributors
Part I. Cognition of Tool Use: 1. Three ingredients for becoming a creative tool-user J. Call
2. Ecology and cognition of tool use in chimpanzees C. Boesch
3. Chimpanzees plan their tool use R. W. Byrne, C. M. Sanz and D. B. Morgan
Part II. Comparative Cognition: 4. Insight, imagination and invention: tool understanding in a non-tool-using corvid N. Emery
5. Why is tool use rare in animals? G. Hunt, R. Gray and A. Taylor
6. Understanding differences in the way human and non-human primates represent tools: the role of teleological-intentional information A. M. Ruiz and L. R. Santos
7. Why do woodpecker finches use tools? S. Tebbich and I. Teschke
Part III. Ecology and Culture: 8. The social context of chimpanzee tool use C. M. Sanz and D. B. Morgan
9. Orangutan tool use and the evolution of technology E. J. M. Meulman and C. P. van Schaik
10. The EthoCebus project: stone tool use by wild capuchin monkeys E. Visalberghi and D. Fragaszy
Part IV. Archaeological Perspectives: 11. From pounding to knapping: how chimpanzees can help us model hominin lithics S. Carvalho, T. Matsuzawa and W. C. McGrew
12. Early hominin social learning strategies underlying the use and production of bone and stone tools M. Caruana, F. d'Errico and L. Backwell
13. Perspectives on stone tools and cognition in the early paleolithic record S. P. McPherron
Index.

Subject Areas: Animal behaviour [PSVP], Evolution [PSAJ], Psychology [JM], Anthropology [JHM]