Tool Use In Seabirds: Puffin Caught On Camera Using Stick To Scratch Itch

Scientists have known for a long time that birds use tools, particularly to extract food. For instance, some parrots use pebbles to grind seashells, while Egyptian vultures use rocks to crack hard ostrich eggs and crows use hooked sticks to catch grub.

However, seabirds tend to have smaller brains compared to other birds. So experts expected tool use to be something that they are yet to develop.

That was until several years ago when ecologist at the University of Oxford Annette Fayet spotted an Atlantic puffin using a stick to scratch its back while bobbing on the sea off the coast of Wales. At the time, no puffin or any other seabird had been observed to use tools, so seeing the puffin use the tool naturally surprised Fayet. Unfortunately, even though she was able to note the behavior in her notebook, she was unable to get photographic evidence.

Four years later on Grimsey Island in Iceland, one of Fayet ’s motion-sensitive cameras captured the footage of a puffin grabbing a stick from the ground and using it to scratch its feathers.

According to experts, even though only two such incidences have been recorded so far, this likely suggests that puffins also engage in tool use, considering that the two instances were observed in two populations on separate islands 1,700 kilometers apart. It just so happens that many creatures’ abilities are left unknown to man because it takes a lot of time to discover them.

As for the puffin caught on camera using the stick, Fayet and her colleagues say it is possible that the creatures are using the sticks to flick away ticks, especially since it was a particularly bad tick season at the time when the video was caught.

Although the researchers’ finding seems simple, it not only expands tool-use behavior to seabirds, but it also expands tool-use to another form of physical maintenance in birds. Before their findings, the only avian tool use for physical maintenance in the wild has been for “anting,” or depositing ants in their plumage.

“(O)ur independent observations span a distance of more than 1,700 km, suggesting that occasional tool use may be widespread in this group, and that seabirds’ physical cognition may have been underestimated,” the researchers wrote.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.