Bird news

Crows Can Use 'Up To Three Tools' In Correct Sequence Without Training

Crows can spontaneously use up to three tools in the correct sequence to achieve a goal, something never before observed in non-human animals without explicit training. Sequential tool use has often been interpreted as evidence for advanced cognitive abilities, such as planning and analogical reasoning, but this has never been explicitly examined.
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Scientists In Northern Alaska Spot A Shorebird Tagged 8,000 Miles Away

Wildlife Conservation Society scientists studying shorebirds in western Arctic Alaska recently made a serendipitous discovery when they spotted a bar-tailed godwit with a small orange flag and aluminum band harmlessly attached to its legs. Further research revealed that scientists in Australia had banded the bird and attached the flag near Victoria -- more than 8,000 miles away.
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From Fable To Fact: Rooks Use Stones And Water To Catch A Worm

In Aesop's fable, "the crow and the pitcher," a thirsty crow uses stones to raise the level of water in a pitcher to quench its thirst. A new study demonstrates that rooks, birds belonging to the corvid family, are able to solve complex problems using tools and can easily master the same technique demonstrated in Aesop's fable.
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Life And Death In The Living Brain: Recruitment Of New Neurons Slows When Old Brain Cells Kept From Dying

Like clockwork, brain regions in many songbird species expand and shrink seasonally in response to hormones. Now, for the first time, neurobiologists have interrupted this natural "annual remodeling" of the brain and have shown that there is a direct link between the death of old neurons and their replacement by newly born ones in a living vertebrate.
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Do Chicago’s Suburbs Hold The Key To Understanding West Nile Virus?

When Tony Goldberg is not whacking through the brush of central Africa, one of the world's great cauldrons of emerging human and animal disease, he is scouring another disease hot spot: the southwestern suburbs of Chicago. The goal of Goldberg's study is to ferret out the reasons why one neighborhood might be in the eye of the West Nile storm while another neighboring area is not.
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