Sometimes tool use is not the key: no evidence for cognitive adaptive specializations in tool-using woodpecker finches

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The use and manufacture of tools has been considered to be cognitively demanding and thus a possible evolutionary driving factor of intelligence. Animal tool use provides the opportunity to investigate whether the use of tools evolved in conjunction with enhanced physical cognitive abilities. However, success in physical tasks may simply reflect enhanced general learning abilities and not cognitive adaptations to tool use. To distinguish between these possibilities, we compared general learning and physical cognitive abilities between the tool-using woodpecker finch, Cactospiza pallida , and its close relative, the small tree finch, Camarhynchus parvulus . Since not all woodpecker finches use tools, we also compared tool-using and nontool-using individuals, predicting that domain-specific experience should lead tool-using woodpecker finches to outperform nontool-users in a task that is similar to their natural tool use. Contrary to our predictions, woodpecker finches did not outperform small tree finches in either of the physical tasks and excelled in only one of the general learning tasks, and tool-using woodpecker finches did not outperform nontool-using woodpecker finches in the physical task closely resembling tool use. Our results provide no evidence that tool use in woodpecker finches has evolved in conjunction with enhanced physical cognition or that domain-specific experience hones domain-specific skills. This is an important contribution to a growing body of evidence indicating that animal tool use, even that which seems complex, does not necessitate specialized cognitive adaptations. ► Tool use may have evolved with enhanced cognitive abilities. ► Woodpecker finches did not outperform their nontool-using relatives in physical tasks. ► Nontool-using small tree finches made fewer errors and needed fewer trials in these tasks. ► Woodpecker finches were only better in an operant task that required perseverance. ► No indication that tool use evolved with enhanced cognitive abilities in this species.