Bird uses food as bait for a bigger haul

[Glenn Beck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNTw7GH325U

This video is pretty cool. Would this be an example of animal technology?

Watch out for the annoying and jarring outro in the last few seconds

[Bilan]

Albert Hitchcock was right...

http://home.earthlink.net/%7Esnailstales/birds.jpg

[Dr Mindbender]

Chimps also use rocks and sticks to crack nutshells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N34Fcn3J00&feature=related

[MarxSchmarx]

This video is pretty cool. Would this be an example of animal technology?

I saw another heron (I believe it was a night heron) in a documentary once that used this technique.

The narrator commented that the technique will die with the heron. This is probably true for solitary birds like the heron.

But for social organisms like the Japanese macaque, and yeah, chimps, these kinds of innovations have staying power:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0206_040206_tvmacaques.html

Pretty neat stuff.

[Dean]

Would this be an example of animal technology?

Yep. The bird uses him as a tool - any system or object used for a purpose which is indirectly acheived is a tool (i.e. the bird wants to eat his prey, not play with the bait - that is incidental).