You're Such a Tool (User)

that's right. Well, I don't know where you got a clothes pin in the office, but well, some of us like to save energy. You are laundry here and floor balcony, we get a lot of wind out there. Yeah exactly, Yeah. I Um, I engaged in a bit of this is of course tool use that you're engaging in here, yes, and uh and I actually engaged in a little bit of this during our recent um great freeze that hit

Atlanta Seddon Snowmageddon as some people call it. And uh, the situation was that we kept making hot tea because that was all we could basically, you know, it's just like, let's just what are we gonna do? Now, let's make hot tea? What we're gonna do? Now, let's play scrabble and let's make hot tea. And that was like, you know, four days of being trapped inside doing that, and our T ball was like the chain was broken on it.

So ended up like constructing something where I took like the T ball and then I used some like some like butcher twine. Is a book called butter twine, Yes, yes, and uh, and like I used that to attach it to to like a metal skewer and uh and created a system of being of moving the T ball in and out of the the boiling kettle. So um wow, So I have to ask you, did you make so much tea that you guys broke it and then you needed to resort to tool using behavior. Yes, so you

found out a little something about yourself during Snowmageddon. Yeah, I think I think I did. And it's it's interesting as we get into this and we start talking about tool use in the animal kingdom, you do see that captivity and uh, and we'll often bring out, um, the more innovative side of many animals. An animal that is not necessarily a tool user may become one in captivity. Uh well, and one that is capable of only say, like a very low level tool use is sometimes capable

of higher level tool use if they're locked in a zoo. Okay, so boredom is the mother of invention, is what I'm hearing. Yes, also the mother of of injury. But but, but but luckily nothing went wrong with the the the t H ball invention that I came up with. So let's um, let's talk about tool use then. Yeah? Okay, so I guess we we normally think about tool use uh in primates, right and goodall witnessing a single blade of grass being stuck down into a termite mound and then a lovely

snack emerging. Yeah, or just like you know, two thousand and one to Space Odyssey, monkeys picking up bones beating other monkeys on the head because weapons are ultimately ultimately tools, right right, But I think that we we we don't necessarily look to other animals and think, oh, well, I bet that they're an extraordinary tool user, right, But in fact they are. And my favorite example is the octopus. Actually, oh yeah, yeah, this one is is really cool? Now,

this is uh an octopus? As we all know, does not have a a shell. There are various cephalopots that do. But the octopus depends on other methods of survival camouflage, of shape changing basically and uh and and being able to sort of creeper around and not draw a lout of attention to itself. Yeah. But what do you do if you've got across the sea floor and there's nothing to camouflage yourself against and I don't know, you've got another mile to go. Well, you could, I guess you could.

If you could evolve, you could slowly develop some sort of a protective coating through uh, you know, through you know, one dead octopus after another dead octopus, until um, you end up you know, selecting that octopus that has a harder shell. Right, Yeah, yeah, I guess you could. Or in the short term, if you lived in Indonesia and you are an octopus and you saw a coconut on the bottom of the sea floor, you could take the two halves of it and you could crawl into it

when you needed to and reassemble it. And no one would be the wiser, right, They'd be like, oh gosh, that that's not prey, that's just a stupid coconut, and I love that. I love that octopus is like, you know what this this is something that I can obscure myself in nobody's gonna know, and now I can resume my journey. Wow, that's really incredible. It's um and and and and it just goes to show that, I mean, all tool use really kind of close us into something

to some serious cognition going on. Yeah, and an octopier pretty smart. As one of the reasons I me personally, I can't really eat them uh in sushi anymore. I just you know, I hear they're as smart as cats, you know, from various things. And then I look at my cat and I'm like, I wouldn't needt my cat on a californ in your role or yeah, if I did eat seafood, I have to say, just just the look of them, I don't know, it just seems it seems like a frightening proposition to have that in my mouth.

But what I what I think is so cool too about this coke in that example is it totally reminded me of this invention. It's in Japan and have you ever seen this? It's this fold up coke machine. Okay, well, it's but I do really want to do an episode about amazing vending machines sometimes, so do all right, Okay, there's actually there's plenty of them, listeners. I think you wink wink, I think you might know we're talking about here. But this I love the idea of this, but it's

super silly. I mean, it's flat packed, looks like a coke machine. When you unpack it, you hip yourself in it and then lo and behold you look like a plastic vending machine. So what happens when people put money into you or reaching to you for snacks? You have several choices in response. But I was thinking, you know that the octopus is is actually much more clever than us humans in trying to camouflage themselves on the streets, so to speak. Well, that's awesome. It's um, we're researching

about this and a lot of tool use um. When it comes to you know, the brain comes down to something uh that we call body scheme schema schema. Yeah, and uh and this is uh, this idea has been around for about a hundred years and it's and it's the idea that our brains are just constantly processing visual tactile feedback about what our bodies are doing and how they're positioned, and you you create these different sort of

versions of ourselves, you know. So like I like to think of it in terms of like martial arts movies, where like somebody goes into say like drunken monkey stance or or tiger stance, you know. But but we have but as tool users, we have a well as humans, we would have other stances like oh my goodness, don't hit me in the face of that ball stance or um or I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna chase the cat stands. That those you know, different body positions that

are aimed towards particular tasks. But when you're throw in tools and you get all these differ different additional positions, you get like grumpy snow shoveler stance or intense polentis stir stands, toothbrusher stands. Don't forget rosota stands, the zota stands. It's that the other one that involves a lot of stirring. Yeah, I just know I'll be asked to stir something and and then I just I lose all memory of what

I'm stirring. It's so it takes so long, delicious when it's done, but it's just it's quite quite an effort. But but anyway, um, so our brains are constantly you know, working, working this out, and it's it's it's definitely an instance of these tools becoming an extension of our bodies. They're a part of our body. Scam there, they become part of who we are. You know, we were used to

hearing about this. One's like you hear people talking about like swordsmanship or golf, you know, and you hear it's like, oh, well you need to make the club an extension of your arm. Yeah, be one with the sword or something, you know. And that's exactly what's going on. Like the more you're you're able to, the better you are using a tool, the more the brain identifies it as a

part of yourself, right right. And actually they were us on a study from the National Institute of Health on tool use tasks for toddlers, and they were talking about how toddlers um that we're using tools to act on themselves, like feed themselves, for instance. We're picking up on that and using that a lot more than externally. In other words,

like you know, feeding Elmo some keenoir or something. Um. And so you do you see that that idea of it being an extension of yourself right there in that example, and that we automatically say, Okay, I'm a little toddler brain and I'm trying to figure this out for myself, and here's my spoon. Um. But you know, Elmo is not going to get his food until much later. But that brings me to this point. You know, we should

probably talk exactly about what tool use is. I mean, you know, it seems pretty obvious, but it's really defined as providing no benefit until they're used for a very specific purpose. So with animals, what's really cool about that is that it shows that the animal is capable of pre planning, advanced planning. Yeah, it's not just an animal, say, picking up a stick and beating random things with it.

It's there's no purpose to that. So's that's not tool used. Now, something like that night develop into tool use in time. But but yeah, there's got to be a purpose in mind. That's right. We're saying a lot of cogitation going on. Cogitation party, um, and they're actually um, I've read that they're they're basically two types of tools. There is a what is good. Well, first, there's something called an artifact, right,

An artifact is something that is crafted. For example, if a chimp, you know, like I say, we're all using like we used to seeing images of like a chimp sticking a poking a stick down a termite hole and coming up with termites to look off. Well, they've been Chimps have been known to chew the termite fishing stick so that it fits better into the holes. So they're

creating an artific fact. Now, if they had not used their mouths to to alter it, they would have what is sometimes called a nature fact, which is kind of like just a found object tool like oh, here's a stick, I'll pick it up, I'll get some bugs on it and eat the bugs off the stick, but I haven't changed the stick. And then when it comes to these

different artifacts, they're basically four levels. Uh. There is reduction where you reduce the mass of a functional object, like take the stick, choose something off of it, Now you can use it. Then there's conjunction where you combine two or more units to make a tool. An example of this where it would be you take like looking at early humans, Like you take a stone, sharpen it into something, and then you attach it to a stick to make a spear. Ghammo, you have a conjunction tool, and then

they're the third level replica replication. This would be where it's conjunction but with two or more similar units. So if you made a two headed spear, you know, you're, you're, you're. You have two different, three different things going on there, and then there's a linkage. And this is the most more complicated form. And this is where you have physically distinct forms used in combination. And that would be like if you made a bow and you made an arrow.

Bow and arrow are both rather different, but together you have a a single um tool that's very useful to

early hunters. Okay, actually that was making me think about elephants. Um. I know that in South Africa, it was observed that an elephant, after digging a hole and drinking water and presumably expitting that water back in, stripped bark from a nearby tree and then chewed it into a large ball, so transforming it, and then plug the hole and covered it with sand, So essentially that the elephant was making m a canteen. Yeah, and then taking that that ball

out again and slurping it up again. So that's that's something definitely the elephant transformed its environment in order to create this kind of groovy canteen. Wow. And yeah, and that's an elephant using like a level two artifact, right right. Um. I mentioned earlier about you know, how captivity can change the level of tool use involved. We see that, um

with the Capucian monkeys. Um, if you've watched if you watched Life, the awesome Discovery slash BBC show, there's you know, great scenes in that and and various other documentaries that show these these guys taking rocks and using them to

bust open nuts so they can eat the inside. And they're very selective about their rocks, right, it's no no rock will do right, and it takes them a while to learn how to do it, like they're there are also lots of cool you know, generally you see lots of footage of the younger ones trying to do it and just failing miserably, like picking the wrong stones, you know,

et cetera. But uh, but the cool thing is that they can actually they've actually been seen a craft tools and captivity instead of because the rock that they're beating the nutwi is just that's a nature of fact, but ends captivity. Sometimes they make artifacts. They've been seen to sticking two pieces of straw together to make a longer probe to reach things that are outside of the cage.

So so, so that's really cool. Again, you know, you captivity, boredom, invention, creative mayhem, as in the case with actually again with the octopive. I know there have been a couple of different instances in captivity that they've done some stuff, And one was at the Sona Santa Monica Pire Aquarium. There was a female California two spotted octopus who swam to the top of her tank, disassembled the valve with her arm, and then released two hundred gallons of seawater into nearby

exhibits and offices. Yeah, so I mean that's pretty crazy. Yeah, And then I understand the same octopus stole somebody's wallet, um made a xerox of their their driver's license, and was able to skip the entire state. Like I think they're still living in Nevada. Yeah I heard that too, but actually you say that, and it did make me think, like, what's going on in the octopus mind there. I mean, do you think that they're swimming around going, you know what?

I need to show all these other sea creatures who's the boss here and what sort of force I have and the power that I have in this aquarium. I'm going to flood this place. O. Man, It's like a like rock Stars trashing a hotel room. Yeah, totally, and that's what I like. Pretty great. There was another one UM who actually disassembled a robot. There was a Yeah, there's this little robot puttering around the aquarium. I don't know why they put it in there, but piece by

piece it was. That is awesome. Yeah. I've seen some cool videos of polar bears um going and they have these like ice flow robots. I posted on the Facebook A want back. But they have like these little robots that are disguised just like chunks of ice and they either flowed or they sort of crawl around on the ice. But polar bears, you know, there's not I guess there's not a lot to do. They're curious animals. They'll see this man end up just tearing it to pieces. Of

course they're like, what is this? I need to help bear come into my realm and and I think it's going to get away. That's right, I'll show you. Um. But again, octopy really smart creatures obviously, And another really cool thing about them is that they use their section comps like pincers like we do. And they have so many neurons actually firing in their arms and and neuron

neuron power. I guess you could say that they can take every single one of those suckers and make them pincers, which just really like blows our ability out of the water there no pun intended. But a lot of this is because these guys have like their ganglia is is uh is, all grouped together, whereas with the molluskin nervous system in other creatures like clams, for instance, they're all over the place. They're widely dispersed. But you don't see

clams using a lot of tools. No, no, they don't. Sorry, they might have a lovely pearl, but that's about it. Um. But that's the cool thing about the octopia that they do have this group of ganglia so to speak, and that gives them the edge over other cephalodes I suppose. Now, another interesting critter in the ocean that's been known to use tools, as of course the dolphin, which comes as less a surprise because everybody's on the you know, especially

thanks to John c. Lily. I was about to say, like, like, I have to have to say like this again to to to remind people who may or may not have heard the podcast that we did on the Strange Life Lives of Scientists. Uh. John cy Lily worked extensively with dolphins, and what we know is that dolphins can actually court other humans given the right circumstances. Yeah. He uh, I

mean he's he's one of them. You really have to trace the whole dolphin mania and our in a lot of our cultural respect for dolphins back to this guy, though he definitely had some made some very questionable choices in his research. Um. But but yeah, so to today, to you know, the post Flipper era, it comes as no surprise that, yeah, dolphins can use tools. Yeah, of course they can court us. That can flash us, you know,

the flashes of the oceans. Um. But the tool that they use is really cool yeah sponges right, yeah, which they used to stir the ocean bottom sand uh, to uncover and disorient prey. Yeah. And the really cool thing about this is that researchers have found that it's a hunting technique that originated in a single female and has passed from mother to daughter. Yeah, And what they did is they analyze the mitochondrial DNA, which is the DNA passed down by females, and they found that that the

thirteen spongers and one d seventy two non spongers. They found the trait appeared to be passed on mostly within a single family line and from mother to daughter, and that sponging most likely originated in a recent ancestor. So this is sort of a new thing for them. Um, And they say, well, okay, why what about the males

have coming? This isn't happening with them. And apparently they hypothesized that male bottlenose dolphins tend to form close bonds with other males and so those alliances aren't really seated to seabed foraging since it's time consuming and it's a

solitary activity. I don't That seems kind a weak sauce to me in terms of a theory, but well, it reminds me a little bit of the the the cheetahs that bring down ostriches and uh that it's covered in one of the episodes of life where uh, since it's only only the males doing it, Uh, it's not getting passed on because the male cheatahs are not involved in uh in rearing and and and raising of yawns. So

so yeah, it's interesting to think. It's like it's one thing to develop to be able to to to develop tool use, but you've got to be able to pass it on. It's got to you know, because I guess conceive what you could have have an animal out there that that learns to use a tool, But is it is it using it a is it using it a lot? And be is it taking that and passing it on to the next generation to where it becomes like standard practice,

right like you seem like you do. Another example of being in captivity is I remember working at the zoo um and finding out that the orangutans there were uh trying to get out of the enclosure. Of course, as they all tried to all the primates do, and the first generation would just get electrocuted from the wire right, And they did that, I don't know, maybe like five times,

and they said, okay, I'm gonna stop. The second generation. Uh, they actually taught them like the wires hot be careful and started, and so they started to try to build things to get over the fence, and they were unsuccessful. And then the third generation again looked at all of this going on and realized that they could actually like short the wire by jumping on the I guess like a tree, I can't remember exactly what it was, and so they could then escape the enclosure that way. So

there you go. Yeah, there's a there's a there's a really interesting recent radio Lab episode that dealt would a again with the orangutanks trying to escape their their enclosure. And this one involved like an orangutank that was apparently using a little piece of metal to pick a lock. So it's it's it's incredible what the higher primates can it up to. Other examples from the Animal Kingdom, you

have gorillas that's sometimes use walking sticks. Then they'll use them to test the depth of water to keep their balance as they cross, which is really cool looking and I've seen that before. If you go to YouTube you can probably find it, especially when they take it and they shake it at the younger gorillas and tell them to to get off their lawn. Um, you have a

chimpanzees using clubs. There was another interesting recent case where a chimpanzee to zoo was like stockpiling rocks to throw because it was old and grumpy, apparently to throw at the zoo visitors. I can advance planning, right, I mean, if you're going to use as a projectile, Yeah, there's some thought that needs to go in there, poor zoo goers. Um. And of course we mentioned chimps foraging um and uh

and and also a macaques using rocks to bust open nuts. Um. Some more interesting examples, This was one I had never heard of before, but up naked mole rats crafting masks. And first of all, I love naked mole rats, Like they're just an amazing animal. If you get to see some of the zoo, definitely see them because they're like

they're living in like a hive environment. There's they're naked, they're funny looking, they walk backwards, they there's just they're just a complete wind as far as as the animals go. But so but they have these powerful protruding teeth that they used to burrow, and their lips are on the inside like behind their teeth and all. Um. Yeah, yeah, they're they're really crazy looking. And and and since they're naked, they all have to sleep in big piles to keep

their body heat. Going on, I'm gonna make a joke there, but but they but to keep their lungs U up clear. Some of the scientists have observed the mole rats um placing wood shavings behind their teeth in front of those lips to create like a basically a simple mask. I mean, it doesn't look you know, when I say mole rats with ask, it may sound like they're creating like big tribal uh you know, masks. It's not really the case. But they're they're crudely using uh you know, little wood

shavings to help protect their face. So yeah, I read about that. That is pretty cool. And and then with humans, of course, our tool uses just all over the place and has been like just an important part of our our evolution. Like their studies that have that that relate to dart throwing, like all the like, our risks are

really complicated. Um in the dart throwing motion, is that the scenario that that that is getting a fair amount of study because the evolution of these amazing risks we have apparently has a lot to do with our ability to use tools. So the dart throwing is this like, Uh,

did this come with the advent of pubs? Yes, ancient caveman pubs where where they they learned to to brew a hard cider and uh, and then they started a plain dark All right, you'd have to establish your prowess with the darts, and therefore we have a nice complicated

risk to think. No, that's completely not true. But hey, speaking of creatures developing things like uh, pubs and hard cider, we have some listener mail uh and it is what I have here is some stuff related to our recent podcast on animal junkies or Junkies the Animal Kingdom, which received a fair amount of feedback. We're not able to read everything, but the first one, this one I was really excited to get because it comes from Jana Uh in Newfoundland, Canada. Um, and we're I spent part of

my childhood. I mentioned mentioned this in in the podcast when we're talking about mooses or moose mooses. Yeah, she says, Hello, I'm from rural Newfoundland, Canada. First of all, I'm glad to hear you lived here once. Plus I would like to second what you said about about the moose mooses here. Sorry, we have hundreds of moose accidents a year here and some of these often result in death, which is always

sad and unnecessary. The moose come out out to the highway to lick the salt on the road, that is that's put on the road to reduce ice. Many people here have have started a group to get the government to allow more moose hunting license if they're extremely overpopulated, uh and put up moose fences along the main highway to reduce accidents. Just thought this is another cool but sad junkie story. That's interesting. Yeah, because you have it's twofold.

You have the the the moose coming in to eat the salt and then uh becoming a pest to uh well becoming a pest. Two drivers though, I guess you could say the drivers of the pest and also where you know they're the ones that are responsible for the overpopulation. But anyway, it's great to hear from somebody in Newfoundland

your Yeah. Um. We also heard from um um a listener by the name of Craig who grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and uh he let us know that he used to live in a neighborhood called Bramblewood, so called because of a very large BlackBerry bramble and uh uh they weren't apparently weren't able to pick all of the blackberries, so they said, uh says the berries we couldn't pick would ferm it in the summer sun and seem to attract

animals from all over. As the more rotten the fruit got, the more birds you would see sluggishly hopping around the ground or just collapsed in a heap on a branch. The rodents got in on the act as well, and it was quite a sight to see startled squirrels leaping for branches and missing. All This uh concentration of slow moving prey eventually attractive snakes, and by the end of BlackBerry season you could always find several snakes lying beneath

the brambles with bulges in their bodies. It's hard to tell if a snake is drunk, but if you were going to uh going to ever get one to consume alcohol, I suppose this would have to have been the way. So that was I love that because we obviously Atlantas in the South and we know those those uh warm, crazy hot summers and I can just imagine all of these creatures laying around, you know, drunk on their on

their BlackBerry brambles and getting eaten by snakes. It's happened to friends of mine, doesn't Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say it has like a very like Faulkner esque ring in the Animal Kingdom and uh and then on this is actually on our Facebook page, Oe. We had to listen by the name of Cynthia, who was inspired by your mention of how cat nip or the nip uma is sometimes uh or at least used to be used as

a t for humans. So she says, quote, thanks to the Animal a Junkie's podcast, I brewed some catnip tea and gave it to my kiddies yesterday with some pretty excellent results. I would definitely be doing that again. Thanks for the idea. I love the podcast, and so I had to get more details on that. So I asked a few questions and she she provided these details. She says, well, I deluded the t two to one because I didn't want to overdo it, so they didn't finish all of

the deluded stuff. I saved the rest for next time, but I left the tea cup with the dregs in it on the ground as well, and that was gone in a couple of seconds. Then there were just two cats rubbing their faces on the water bowl and around it. You gotta love it. Yeah, yeah, I have to say that listeners don't try this at home. Kids, don't try this home because I know that Cynthia is an expert

key brewer. Yeah, yeah, don't don't. Yeah, this is and this is an experiment carried off vira own free will. We did not contradate. We didn't at all. Yeah, we just don't want to be responsible for any uh you know, weird key related um epidemics out there, marauding cats, gangs of marauding cats. Yeah. So there you have it. If you have any thing to add about animal john kies, about animal tool users, or even like your own children learning to use tools. I find that fascinating as well. Um,

then then you know, let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter is Blow the Mind and we frequently update that with all sorts of cool links to how stuff works content, as well as content from elsewhere around the web, and you can always drop us a line at Blow the Mind at House to forks dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the

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