Tool use

Tool use
Werkzeug-Gebrauch

There are special behaviours in animals that have been documented rarely and only from few individuals of a given species. Some of these behaviours are arbitrarily categorized as tool-use.

Marabou storks (Leptoptilos cruminiferus) were observed on several days to practise an insightful method of food amelioration: To obtain Heliocopris dung beetles buried in an elephant dung heap, they carried a whole clump of dung and soil to a water hole, washed it carefully and then swallowed the clean beetle.
© Seibt & Wickler

A wild African elephant (Loxodonta africana) threw with the trunk various materials - mud, soil, vegetation - towards an interfering white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) about 15 m away.

Literature
Seibt, Uta & Wickler, Wolfgang 1978: Marabou storks wash dung beetles. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 46, 324-327.

Wickler, Wolfgang & Seibt, Uta 1997: Aimed object-throwing by a wild African elephant in an interspecific encounter. Ethology 103, 365-368

There are special behaviours in animals that have been documented rarely and only from few individuals of a given species. Some of these behaviours are arbitrarily categorized as tool-use.
Marabou storks (Leptoptilos cruminiferus) were observed on several days to practise an insightful method of food amelioration: To obtain Heliocopris dung beetles buried in an elephant dung heap, they carried a whole clump of dung and soil to a water hole, washed it carefully and then swallowed the clean beetle. © Seibt & Wickler

A wild African elephant (Loxodonta africana) threw with the trunk various materials - mud, soil, vegetation - towards an interfering white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) about 15 m away.