Tool Use in Animals: Cognition and Ecology

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.

Author: Crickette M. Sanz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/07/2013
Pages: 324
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.75lbs
Size: 9.80h x 7.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781107011199

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2014

About the Author
Call, Josep: - Josep Call is a comparative psychologist specialising in primate cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He is also the co-founder of the Wolfgang Kohler primate research centre and has an extensive back catalogue of works including 3 books and nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles.Boesch, Christophe: - Christophe Boesch is Director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology's primatology department. His work covers many areas of chimpanzee biology which he has used to further understanding of the evolution of cognitive and cultural abilities in humans. He is also the founder and president of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation.Sanz, Crickette M.: - Crickette Sanz is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Washington University, St Louis, where she teaches courses on primate behaviour and human evolution. She is one of the principal investigators of the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, which focuses on studying and conserving sympatric central chimpanzee and western lowland gorilla populations.