Animals That Use Tools: Chimps, Crows, Otters and More

What counts as tool use?

Biologists usually define a tool as a loose object that an animal holds or controls to change something else, such as a stick used to pull out food or a stone used to break a shell. Smashing a snail against a fixed rock, building a nest or dropping a shell from the air is often treated as a borderline case. A widely used definition comes from the researcher Benjamin Beck, whose book Animal Tool Behavior has been updated with colleagues several times.

Tool making is rarer still. It means the animal changes an object first, for example by stripping leaves off a twig, before using it. Only a handful of species make tools regularly in the wild, and the most skilled of them appear in this list.

1. Chimpanzees: termite fishing and nut cracking

Chimpanzees are the most versatile tool users after humans. In 1960, Jane Goodall saw a chimpanzee at Gombe in Tanzania push a grass stem into a termite mound and pull it out covered in termites. Since then, chimpanzees have been seen using sticks to dip for ants and honey, chewed leaves as sponges to soak up water, and stone or wooden hammers to crack hard nuts on anvils.

Each community has its own traditions. Nut cracking, for example, is common in West Africa but has never been seen in East Africa, and young chimpanzees spend years watching their mothers before they master it. At Fongoli in Senegal, chimpanzees even jab sharpened sticks into tree hollows to catch sleeping bushbabies. Read more in do chimpanzees use tools?

2. New Caledonian crows: hooks made from twigs

The New Caledonian crow lives only on the islands of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, east of Australia. It is probably the best tool maker outside the primates. The crows choose forked twigs, snap off the unwanted parts and sculpt a small hook at the tip, which they use to pull beetle larvae out of holes in dead wood. They also tear stepped, barbed tools from the edges of screw pine (pandanus) leaves.

In 2002, a captive crow named Betty at the University of Oxford bent a straight piece of wire into a hook to lift a basket of food from a tube, a feat that surprised researchers. Experiments have since shown that these crows can use a short tool to fetch a longer tool that reaches the food, a step that needs some planning. For more on corvid brainpower, see how smart are crows?

3. Sea otters: stones as hammers and anvils

The sea otter of the North Pacific coasts floats on its back and uses its chest as a table. It places a flat stone there and bangs clams, mussels and sea urchins against it until the shell breaks. Underwater, otters hammer stones against abalone shells to knock them loose from rocks, striking up to about 45 times in 15 seconds.

A sea otter has a loose pouch of skin under each foreleg, where it can store food and sometimes a favorite stone between dives. Otters also use empty shells, driftwood and even discarded bottles as tools. Tool habits vary from one otter to another and are passed mainly from mother to pup. Find out more in do sea otters use tools?

4. Bottlenose dolphins: sponges as nose guards

In Shark Bay, Western Australia, some Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins break off cone-shaped marine sponges and wear them over their beaks. They then nose through rubble on the seafloor for fish hiding there, and the sponge seems to protect them from sharp rocks and stinging creatures. This behavior, called sponging, was first noticed in the 1980s and has been seen nowhere else.

Most spongers are females, and genetic studies suggest that all of them descend from a single maternal line. Calves learn the technique by following their mothers, which makes sponging one of the clearest examples of a learned tradition in a sea animal.

5. Capuchin monkeys: a 3,000-year stone age

Bearded capuchins in the dry forests of northeastern Brazil pick up heavy stones and use them to crack open hard palm nuts and cashew nuts on rock or log anvils. They also dig with stones and probe crevices with sticks. Young capuchins take years of practice to become good at it.

At Serra da Capivara National Park, archaeologists dug up stones used by capuchins and showed that monkeys there have been cracking nuts with stone tools for at least 3,000 years. Researchers also found that when capuchins bash stones together, they accidentally knock off sharp flakes that look much like simple stone tools made by early humans.

6. Elephants: fly swatters and back scratchers

Both wild and captive Asian elephants pick up branches with their trunks to swat flies and scratch hard-to-reach spots. In one study, 8 of 13 captive Asian elephants shortened or trimmed branches to make a better fly switch, which counts as tool making. Elephants have also been reported digging small water holes, then plugging them with a ball of chewed bark and covering them with sand, apparently to slow evaporation.

7. Veined octopus: coconut-shell shelters

The veined octopus, also called the coconut octopus, lives on sandy seafloors in the tropical Indian and western Pacific oceans. In 2009, researchers described octopuses off Indonesia digging up discarded coconut-shell halves, stacking them under their bodies and stilt-walking across the sand on two arms to carry them away. When threatened, an octopus assembles the shells into a closed shelter and hides inside.

Because the octopus carries the shells for later use rather than using them on the spot, the behavior was hailed as the first clear case of tool use in an invertebrate. Octopuses in general are famous problem solvers, as explained in how smart are octopuses?

8. Woodpecker finches: cactus-spine probes

The woodpecker finch is one of Darwin’s finches of the Galápagos Islands. It feeds like a woodpecker but lacks a woodpecker’s long, barbed tongue. Instead, it picks up a cactus spine or twig, sometimes trimming it to size, and uses it to pry insect larvae out of holes in bark. Tool use is most common in dry habitats and seasons, when hidden larvae are among the best food available.

9. Orangutans and gorillas

Sumatran orangutans in some swamp forests use sticks to pry the nutritious seeds out of spiky Neesia fruits without touching the stinging hairs inside, and to probe tree holes for insects and honey. Orangutans also hold large leaves over their heads as umbrellas in the rain. These habits differ between populations, which suggests they are learned traditions.

Gorillas use tools much less often. In 2005, researchers in the Republic of the Congo reported a wild western gorilla using a branch as a walking stick to test the depth of a pool as she waded in, the first published record of tool use by a wild gorilla.

10. Egyptian vultures: stones that crack eggs

Egyptian vultures cannot break the thick shell of an ostrich egg with their slender beaks. So they pick up a stone in the beak and throw it down at the egg, again and again, until the shell cracks. Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick described the behavior from Tanzania in the 1960s. These vultures have also been seen using twigs to roll up wool for lining their nests.

11. Palm cockatoos: drumsticks

Male palm cockatoos, large dark gray cockatoos of Cape York Peninsula in Australia and of New Guinea, break off a stout stick or seed pod and beat it against a hollow tree. The loud drumming, which can carry about 100 m (330 ft), is part of their courtship and territory display. A 2017 study found that each male drums with his own regular rhythm, a rare example of a tool used to make sound.

12. Insects, herons and other surprising tool users

Some digger wasps pick up a small pebble in their jaws and use it to pound down the soil over the burrow that holds their eggs. Certain ants drop bits of leaf or soil into liquid food so that it soaks in, then carry the soaked pieces back to the nest. Several herons, including the green heron of North America, drop bread, feathers or insects onto the water as bait and grab the fish that come to investigate.

Other reports are still debated. In 2013, researchers described mugger crocodiles and American alligators lying near bird colonies with sticks balanced on their snouts during the nesting season, possibly to lure birds collecting nest material.

Why do only some animals use tools?

Tool use is most common in animals that eat food that is hard to reach or protected, such as insects hidden in wood, nuts with tough shells or shellfish clamped to rocks. It helps to have something to hold a tool with, whether hands, a trunk, a strong beak or flexible arms. It also helps to live a long time, have a long childhood and spend it near experienced adults, because many tool skills are learned by watching others.

Tool use is not a perfect measure of intelligence. Some species, such as the woodpecker finch, seem to have a strong inborn tendency to use tools, while some very clever animals rarely use them in the wild simply because their food does not require it. For a wider look at animal minds, see our list of the smartest animals.