An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford and the South Iceland Nature Research Centre has observed two Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) scratching themselves with a small wooden stick — the first known instance of wild seabirds using tools.
An Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) scratching with a stick on Grimsey Island, Iceland. Image credit: Fayet et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1918060117.
“Tool use is present in a small number of species — less than 1% of known genera — and is mostly related to feeding,” said University of Oxford’s Dr. Annette Fayet and her colleagues.
“It is most common in mammals and birds, mainly in primates and passerines, some of which use or even manufacture tools to complete complex tasks.”
“Seabirds feed at sea, mainly on fish, and have evolved unparalleled abilities to dive, swim, and catch prey underwater,” they said.
“The ocean seems an unlikely setting for seabirds to evolve tool use, not least because of the lack of objects to use as tools and of concealed food sources in the water.”
“Seabirds only visit land to breed, which limits the opportunity for tool use and could favor its use for non-foraging purposes like courtship or physical maintenance. Such behaviors may also remain unreported because seabirds are difficult to observe: they spend most of their time at sea, underground, or on inaccessible cliffs, and many are nocturnal.”
“Our finding of another physical-maintenance tool-use behavior in wild birds besides anting suggests that tool use can emerge without strong selective pressure to obtain resources.”
The Atlantic puffin is a species of seabird in the auk family Alcidae.
This bird is the only puffin species native to the Atlantic Ocean. It breeds in Iceland, Norway, Greenland, Newfoundland, and the Faroe Islands, and as far south as Maine in the west and parts of Great Britain in the east.
Dr. Fayet and co-authors observed Atlantic puffins’ behavior at their breeding colonies, one in Wales and the other in Iceland.
“On June 18, 2014, on Skomer Island, Wales, an adult puffin was observed holding a wooden stick in its bill and using it to scratch its back for 5 seconds,” the researchers said.
“The bird was sitting on the sea under the colony’s cliffs, among conspecifics. Shortly thereafter the bird took off — still holding the stick, albeit it is unclear for how long — and was lost from view.”
“On July 13, 2018, on Grimsey Island, Iceland, a camera trap recorded similar behavior,” they added.
“In the video, an adult puffin picks up a wooden stick from the ground then uses it to scratch its chest feathers. The video stops shortly after this first bout of scratching. On later videos, the stick is on the ground. It eventually disappears after 24 hours, likely displaced by a bird or the wind.”
To date, only primates and elephants have been observed using tools for body care.
“Our discovery of another type of tool use in wild birds, outside of the Passeriform order where most avian tool use is known to occur, and of a form so far restricted in the wild to primates and elephants, highlights the importance of widening the discussion on the evolution of animal tool use to a broader framework,” the scientists said.
“We encourage researchers to include species not traditionally considered as good candidates for tool use and to report unusual behaviors across species.”
“Our finding also warrants further studies on seabird cognition, a topic almost entirely unstudied but clearly rife with opportunity for future research.”
A paper on the findings was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Annette L. Fayet et al. Evidence of tool use in a seabird. PNAS, publihsed online December 30, 2019; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1918060117
