Oxe Eye Daisy among May Apple Leaves

Tool-less Dogs--Part 2

In my last post, I gave several examples of wild animals that make and use tools. There are myriad other examples from nature that I could site, to demonstrate that we humans are now understood not to be the only tool fabricators and manipulators. So much for the dumbness of wild critters. This thought brings up a question: Are there domesticated critters that use tools?

Here’s an example that recently gave me a striking display of its disinclination to fashion or use tools: the domesticated dog. (I specifically use the adjective “domesticated” here, because wild dogs have been observed using tools. As I mentioned earlier, wild creatures are smarter than their domesticated cousins.)

I was watching a particular dog—my dog—who was deeply and contentedly absorbed in chewing on a bone: a cow’s thick leg bone, with loads of tasty and nutritious marrow inside. The bone was too strong to crush in his teeth, so he had to be satisfied with sticking his tongue as far down the core of the bone as he could get. Each lick was bringing him only the tiniest taste of marrow. It was an excruciatingly slow process. A human—or even a wild crow—would have been pondering alternative assaults on the bone that would have immediately yielded more of the desired marrow.

I was admiring the tenacity that he exhibited, when the thought came to me that, with a knife or other pointed implement, I could quickly dig out most of that marrow for him. A follow-up thought: If I were a dog, I’d grab a stick, have that bone cleaned out in short order, and move on to other adventures. Why did this not occur to my doggie—a critter who I consider to be well above normal canine intelligence? He has demonstrated his mental aptitude in many other delightful ways. Why be so dull now? Couldn’t he figure out how to seize a twig in his teeth, jam it down the center of the bone, and withdraw it, covered in delicious marrow? Hey, a crow can do it! Isn’t my dog smarter than a crow?

I was becoming a little disillusioned with my canine pal, when yet another thought came to me: Why does a dog need to use tools? He can rely upon humans to do the work for him! Just a few tens of thousands of years ago, the dog transformed himself from a wild beast to a cuddly companion of Homo sapiens. He endeared himself to our ancestors, by eating our trash and scaring off the many demons who lurk in the dark. (Most of the demons are illusory, but it’s to a dog’s advantage to spice our imaginations and then act as though he is saving us.) The dog thus morphed from a drab-colored, wolf-like creature to the adorable and cute companion who has been at our side ever since.

That was a very smart move on the part of my dog’s canine ancestors. They morphed themselves from hungry, lonely outcasts to pampered sidekicks. They willingly submitted to our control, in exchange for a far cushier lifestyle. We may view them as submissive and malleable slaves… they don’t care. They have no face to lose. They’re not proud. They’ve gotten what they want from us: comfort and regular meals. Who is smarter—us or them?

So, maybe my dog is much more astute than I give him credit for. Why should the dog put all that effort into learning how to make and manipulate tools, when he can get us to do it for him? We do have that opposable thumb, after all. The dog can allow us to do all the work, as he benefits from all the dividends. He also probably feels that the wild animals can go ahead and show off with their tools. They may appear to be clever, but simply haven’t realized that life is all about training humans to do the work for them, so they can lie around, endlessly chewing on bones. My dog feels sorry for his wild compatriots… they’re not half as clever as domesticated dogs are.

Wren Babies

About one week old Carolina Wren chicks.

Tool-less Dogs--Part 1

Once upon a time—only a few decades ago, in fact—most animal scientists were convinced that humans were the sole creature to make and use tools. These scholars were sure that the superior intelligence of Homo sapiens was required, in order to be able to create and employ tools—as well as an opposable thumb to provide the necessary dexterity. These unique human advantages are crucial, it was thought, in order to forge a complex culture and to manipulate the environment to one’s use through tools. We humans rule the world by dint of our big brain, our complex instruments, and our technology (and that thumb, of course). We are alone in our use of tools!

That prideful perception has become assigned to the trash heap of theories, as one observer after another has witnessed and described nature’s many other critters who intelligently fashion and employ tools. Some of the first examples to shatter the outdated viewpoint were observations of other primates: our chimpanzee and ape cousins. They are quite accomplished at using sticks and twigs to extract insects from hiding places, to measure water depth (Is it safe to cross this stream?), and for other purposes. They sharpen sticks to use as weapons. They are also adept at using stones for cracking nuts and other clever applications. Chimps will chew leaves to soften them and use it as a sponge to soak up water. They watch each other, learn these tricks, and pass them on.

Elephants will pull pieces of bark from a tree to stuff in a small water hole, in order to maintain the hole they just dug. They move large objects (like boulders and tree trunks) to use as stepping stools to reach overhead objects. The will grab a stick and use it as a back scratcher. They don’t possess a thumb at all, but have a very dexterous and sensitive trunk. Maybe that makes up for their clumsy feet?

Now, elephants are known to be very sociable animals and are very intelligent. But even “dumb” birds can do it. Crows cleverly manipulate sticks with their beaks to extract insects from logs. They also drop hard-shelled nuts on human-built pavement, wait until passing cars crush them, and then retrieve the nutmeats. Ravens carefully select twigs, which they then use for toys.

Moving to aquatic animals, octopuses collect sunken coconut shells and move them to a new location, to build themselves a protective shelter. That’s not only a tool-building skill, but also a good example of planning ahead. Some species of fish employ rocks to crack the hard shells of bivalves. And let’s not forget those clever dolphins. They blow bubble rings and play with them, use conch shells to trap fish, and stick a sponge on the end of their sensitive noses to protect them from abrasions, as they forage along a rocky sea bottom.

What is common in all of these examples of tool building is they are exhibited by what are considered to be Earth’s more intelligent animals. In fact, these examples were all wild animals. Scientists have known for some time that animals in the wild are smarter than their domesticated cousins. When an animal is bred for tameness, its brainpower suffers. It seems to give up intelligence for the safety of human companionship. So how about a domestic example of animal tool use? More on that next time…

My friend Shell's sunset photo of dogwood blossoms

Dinosaur Luck

We humans tend to look with fascination upon the dinosaurs; being those formidable, scary beasts who once roamed ancient Earth’s surface (as well as modern film thrillers), but then suddenly became extinct, some 65 million years ago. They had their time, but just couldn’t last, we think. In fact, they had the bad luck of being susceptible to a meteorite that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula.

In the aftermath of the impact, the dinosaurs disappeared, and little mammals—previously hovering on the fringes, cowering from the lizard monsters—prospered. Some of those mammals were our ancestors. Had the meteorite missed Earth, evolution would have played out a different story. If so, today’s most dominant species could be an intelligent Tyrannosaurus rex (with opposable thumbs, of course), rather than Homo sapiens. Bad luck, dinosaurs; good luck, quadrupedal and bipedal mammals.

But there’s more to the story than that. If we look even further back in time—some 200 million years and more—there were two great families of critters who competed to dominate the Earth: dinosaurs and crocodile ancestors. Both were big bruisers, both were prospering, both were diverse (fostering myriad species), both lived in similar places and filled similar ecological niches, and both were evolving at the same rate (fast). The future looked great for them. Something happened, however, that allowed the dinosaurs to shove aside the ancient crocs and go on to dominate the terrestrial ecosystem for over 100 million years, evolving into a fantastic variety of critters, while the crocs muddled along as smaller creatures, mostly hiding underwater.

What allowed the dinos to triumph, even when the croc ancestors initially had them outnumbered? Why didn’t the crocs have the dinos on the ropes? Until recently, scientists have assumed—given evolution’s survival-of-the-fittest depiction—that dinosaurs possessed some characteristic that helped them out-compete their crocodile competitors. It is not clear what that advantage may have been. The issue is under ongoing investigation.

One recently published scientific paper, however, suggests that the dinos did not possess any superior quality that the crocs lacked… it may have simply been pure luck. They dodged a bullet that the crocs caught. That’s fascinating!

Then a crashing meteorite some 65 million years ago brought the dinosaurs bad luck. They were kicked off the evolutionary mountain and we mammals replaced them. Prior to that—some 200 million years ago—another random incident may have smiled upon the dinos, displacing their competitors. A meteorite? A croc-specific disease? If so, it was the dinos’ good luck back then. Were it not for chance at that ancient time, we mammalian humans again might never have come about. Smart crocs (with opposable thumbs, of course) could have been the long time winners.

So, before we get too big a head about our dominance over today’s Earth, two facts should bring us humans a little humility: (1) we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a string of favorable coincidences (our good luck) and (2) the extinct crocs and dinos flourished for a period a thousand times longer than we have been around. We can’t claim true bragging rights for at least another few million years.

Spring Dandelion

In spring, even a dandelion is pretty.