Tools of the Wild: Unveiling the Crafty Side of Nature
A tiny blanket octopus, floating in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, holds venomous jellyfish tendrils along its arms for protection. A macaque on a Thai beach smashes shellfish open with a stone. Searching for a mate, a cricket in southern India carefully carves a hole in a leaf to amplify his love song.
Like you—and the device you’re reading this on—these creatures are using tools.
Archaeologists have long considered tool use to be an evolutionary milestone that distinguished our lineage from other animals. Humans were considered the technological species.
But since the mid-20th century, hundreds of nonhuman species have been found busily making use of myriad natural materials. There are orangutans that pry seeds with sticks, elephants that swat flies with trunk-held twigs, bees that place dung to ward off predatory wasps, archerfish that turn water itself into a spear, and many more.
Given we now know tool use appears
