Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 75, Issue 4, April 2008, Pages 1199-1208
Animal Behaviour

Review
Revisiting the definition of animal tool use

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.09.028Get rights and content

Benjamin Beck's definition of tool use has served the field of animal cognition well for over 25 years (Beck 1980, Animal Tool Behavior: the Use and Manufacture of Tools, New York, Garland STPM). This article proposes a new, more explanatory definition that accounts for tool use in terms of two complementary subcategories of behaviours: behaviours aimed at altering a target object by mechanical means and behaviours that mediate the flow of information between the tool user and the environment or other organisms in the environment. The conceptual foundation and implications of the new definition are contrasted with those of existing definitions, particularly Beck's. The new definition is informally evaluated with respect to a set of scenarios that highlights differences from Beck's definition as well as those of others in the literature.

Section snippets

Tool use concepts

We begin by setting an informal target for a definition of tool use, as we understand the concept. A biological organism is separated from its environment by a physical boundary; for most animals and most behaviours, this boundary is approximately the surface of the skin. Interaction happens at the boundary in two ways: an organism can take action to cause physical alterations to the environment (e.g. pushing, crushing, or opening objects) and an organism can sense information in the

Beck's definition: a critique

None of the preceding summary should be controversial. Perhaps surprisingly, however, existing definitions, including Beck's, generally focus on the physical aspects, leaving sensory and communication-related issues implicit (a subject we visit in detail in a later section). Even within the scope of physical interaction, Beck's definition raises subtle questions when applied to some cases of tool use: first is the criterion that tools be unattached objects; second is the specification of the

A new definition of tool use

At this point, we have introduced a set of concepts sufficient to suggest a new definition of tool use.

Tool use is the exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object (the tool) with the goal of (1) altering the physical properties of another object, substance, surface or medium (the target, which may be the tool user or another organism) via a dynamic mechanical interaction, or (2) mediating the flow of information between the tool user and the environment or other organisms in

Conclusion

We have presented a new definition of tool use and argued that it improves on the standard definition in the literature. It explicitly encompasses two general classes of behaviour: those that produce dynamic interactions with the environment, and those associated with mediation of the flow of information in the environment. The new definition is not perfect. An important caveat identified by Beck (1980, page 133) is that tool use ‘dovetails imperceptibly with other categories of behavior’. In

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under award IIS-0534398.

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