If two birds meet deep in the forest, does anybody hear?
Until now, nobody did, unless an intrepid biologist was hiding underneath a
bush and watching their behavior, or the birds happened to meet near a research
monitoring station. But an electronic tag designed at the University of
Washington can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild.
A new study led by a biologist at Scotland’s University of
St. Andrews used the UW tags to see whether crows might learn to use tools from
one another. The findings, published last week in Current Biology, supported
the theory by showing an unexpected amount of social mobility, with the crows
often spending time near birds outside their immediate family.