title: With Honors (film)

text: The film was shot at various locations in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, including the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The exterior of Winthrop House appears, but the interiors pictured are not that of actual Harvard houses, and the last scene of the movie was shot at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The buildings and surroundings were dressed up to look as if it were Harvard and many of the people in the final scene are Illinois students. The graduation scene was shot while the local climate in Illinois had not allowed for the trees to bloom leaves and so artificial branches and leaves were stapled on. All of the outdoor shots of Harvard's Widener Library had the University of Minnesota's Northrop Auditorium in that role. The scene in which Simon Wilder and Professor Pitkannan debate the role of the president in American democracy was filmed in Lincoln Hall at Northwestern Law School.


title: With Honors (film)

text: The film received predominantly negative reviews from critics. Review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes collected 26 reviews and gave the film a 19% approval rating, with an average rating of 4.1/10. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, praising the acting, but criticizing the "clichéd" plot.


title: With Honors (film)

text: According to Box Office Mojo, the film grossed about $20 million in the U.S. It was #1 at the U.S. weekend box office between May 6–8.


title: With Honors (film)

text: The soundtrack was released on March 22, 1994, by Maverick Records and Warner Bros. Records. It contains the U.S. No. 2 hit single and theme song "I'll Remember" by pop singer Madonna. She received nominations from the Golden Globes, Grammys, and MTV Movie Awards.


title: With Honors (film)

text: Seattle grunge band Mudhoney were asked to contribute a track to the soundtrack. In the liner notes from their compilation "March to Fuzz" written by the band, "They sent us a clip from the movie "With Honors" of some jock running through the snow with EMF's hit "Unbelievable" scoring the action. They said they were looking for an upbeat song like that for this part of the film. We told them that we had a bitchin' little instrumental that might work. They insisted on a song with words. So, I put some words on it and we sent down both versions, figuring they'd have to choose the instrumental. They didn't." The song, "Run Shithead Run," is included on the soundtrack but Mudhoney claims they never got another such request.


title: With Honors (film)

text: The Pretenders' cover of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" also appeared in "" as one of the two versions of the same song that was played in the movie.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Ismail Merchant (born Ismail Noor Muhammad Abdul Rahman (25 December 1936 – 25 May 2005)) was an Indian film producer, director and screenwriter. He worked for many years in collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included Director (and Merchant's longtime professional and domestic partner) James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Born in Bombay (Mumbai), Merchant was son of Hazra (née Memon) and Noor Mohamed Rehman, a Bombay textile dealer. He grew up bilingual in Gujarati and Urdu, and learned Arabic and English at school. When he was 11, he and his family were caught up in the 1947 partition of India. His father was the President of the Muslim League and refused to move to Pakistan. Merchant later said that he carried memories of "butchery and riots" into adulthood.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: As a child at the age of 9, Merchant delivered a speech about partition at a political rally in front of a crowd of 10,000. At age 13, he developed a close friendship with actress Nimmi, who introduced him to studios in Bombay (the center of Hindi film industry). It was she who inspired his ambitious rise to stardom.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Merchant studied at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and received BA degree of University of Bombay. It was here he developed a love for movies. When he was 22, he moved to USA to study at New York University where he received an MBA degree. While in New York, he gave up his family name of Abdul Rehman for Merchant. He supported himself by working as a messenger for the UN in New York and used this opportunity to persuade Indian delegates to fund his film projects. Of this experience, he said, "I was not intimidated by anyone or anything." Immersed in a new world of art and culture, it was here that Merchant discovered the films of Bengali director Satyajit Ray, as well as those of European artists such as Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: In 1961, Merchant made a short film, "The Creation of Woman". It was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Merchant met American movie director James Ivory at a screening in New York of Ivory's documentary "The Sword and the Flute" in 1959. In May 1961, Merchant and Ivory formed the film production company Merchant Ivory Productions. Merchant and Ivory were long-term life partners. Their professional and romantic partnership lasted 44 years, from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: The Guinness Book of World Records says theirs was the longest partnership in independent cinema history. Until Merchant's death in 2005, they produced nearly 40 films, including a number of award winners. Novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was the screenwriter for most of their productions.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: In 1963, MIP premiered its first production, "The Householder", based upon a novel by Jhabvala (who also wrote the screenplay). This feature became the first Indian-made film to be distributed internationally by a major American studio, Columbia Pictures. However, it wasn't until the 1970s that partnership "hit on a successful formula for studied, slow-moving pieces ... Merchant Ivory became known for their attention to tiny period detail and opulence of their sets". Their first success in this style was Jhabvala's adaptation of Henry James's "The Europeans".


title: Ismail Merchant

text: In addition to producing, Merchant directed a number of films and two TV features. For TV, he directed a short feature entitled "Mahatma and the Mad Boy", and a full-length feature, "The Courtesans of Bombay", made for Britain's Channel Four. Merchant made his film directorial debut with 1993's "In Custody" based on a novel by Anita Desai, and starring Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor. Filmed in Bhopal, India, it won National Awards from the Government of India for Best Production Design and Special Jury award for lead actor Shashi Kapoor. His second directing feature, "The Proprietor", starred Jeanne Moreau, Sean Young, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Christopher Cazenove and was filmed on location in Paris, France.


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Of his partnership with Ivory and Jhabvala, Merchant once commented: "It is a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory ... I am an Indian Muslim, Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a Protestant American. Someone once described us as a three-headed god. Maybe they should have called us a three-headed monster!"


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Merchant was fond of cooking, and he wrote several books including "Ismail Merchant's Indian Cuisine", "Ismail Merchant's Florence", "Ismail Merchant's Passionate Meals", and "Ismail Merchant's Paris: Filming and Feasting in France". He also wrote books on filmmaking, including a book about the making of the film "The Deceivers" in 1988 titled "Hullabaloo in Old Jeypur", and another about the making of "The Proprietor" called "Once Upon a Time ... The Proprietor". His last book was entitled "My Passage from India: A Filmmaker's Journey from Bombay to Hollywood and Beyond".


title: Ismail Merchant

text: Merchant died in Westminster, England aged 68, following surgery for abdominal ulcers. He was buried in Bada Qabrastan Mumbai in Marine Lines, Mumbai, India on 28 May 2005, in keeping with his wish to be buried with his ancestors.


title: Torta

text: Torta is a culinary term that can, depending on the cuisine, refer to cakes, pies, flatbreads, sandwiches, or omelettes.


title: Torta

text: The word comes from the Spanish "torta" (), itself from Late Latin "torta", an abbreviation of "torta panis" ("twisted bread"). The English word "tart" is related.


title: Torta

text: In some countries of Latin America, the word "torta", in a very common usage, is for sweet cakes (tortes), such as a wedding or birthday cake. This meaning is also present in other European languages. For example, the Italian "torta", German "torte" or French "tarte". In Mexico, the sweet cake is normally referred to as "pastel", which is also used in other parts of Latin America with this meaning. "Huevo en torta" (not to be confused with "torta de huevo") is a typical pastry from Sobrarbe, Aragon, Spain. It could also mean a sandwich made from a bread called bolillo, with a filling of meat and vegetables, which can include beef, cochinita pibil, and many others.


title: Torta

text: In the southern Philippines, in the Visayas and Mindanao islands, "torta" is generally used to refer to small cakes. It usually refers to "mamón" or "torta mamón", a native porous sponge cake delicacy that resembles a large cupcake with butter, sugar, and/or cheese on top, traditionally served with "sikwate" (a thick, hot drink made of ground roasted cacao seeds) for afternoon snack or merienda.


title: Torta

text: In Hungarian, Slovak, Slovene, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Swedish, Italian and Macedonian and Bulgarian, it is a word for cake, typically made with layered sponge and cream, chocolate or fruit filling. In Portugal, it designates specifically a Swiss roll.


title: Torta

text: "Torta" in Spain originated in different regional variants of flatbread, of which the "torta de gazpacho" and "torta cenceña" still survives in certain areas of Central Spain. Tortas are also mentioned in Leviticus 24:5-9, in the Spanish translation of the Bible. Presently, however, the word "torta" is also applied to different kinds of bread and pastry products according to the region.


title: Torta

text: Historically, the difference between "torta" and bread was its round and flat shape, as well as the use of baking soda/powder as the proofing agent instead of yeast. In most regions, a "torta" was traditionally considered an inferior form of bread, as the well known Spanish aphorism expresses:


title: Torta

text: In Mexico a variation says: "A falta de pan, tortillas" ("Where there is no bread, "tortillas""). However, the term "torta" in Mexico typically refers to a sandwich made with bread (see Mexico section, below, for more details).


title: Torta

text: In the northern Philippines, particularly among Tagalog-speaking provinces and islands, "torta" refers to a class of omelettes made by mixing eggs with various ingredients.


title: Torta

text: In Italian, "" means either cake or pie, however sweet or savoury. However, in the US, it came to have a different meaning within the Italian-American community.


title: Torta

text: The Italian "torta" is differentiated from "crostata" by the filling: a "crostata" has an inconsistent chunky filling, whereas a "torta" has a consistent filling made of blended ingredients.


title: Torta

text: Some falsely believe that an Italian crust torta is a combination of layered cheeses and tomatoes to be spread onto bread. Italian torta is a pie similar to quiche and served as a brunch item. However, torta is different than quiche as the crust is mostly made of cheese, not egg. The crust can also be made from pizza dough. Ingredients vary as there are many variations of this torta. Traditional Italian torta usually includes ricotta, parmesan, parsley, and onion. There are also variations that contain meat and some that are completely vegetarian. These vegetarian torte sometimes contain artichokes and spices for flavor. This torta is made in a springform pan instead of a traditional pie pan.


title: Torta

text: Torta in Portugal, Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries refers to a moist cake or a pie which can be a sweet or savory dish.


title: Torta

text: Most "tortas" are generally savoury, with a classic Maltese dish being "torta tal-lampuki" (lampuki, singular lampuka, are a type of common fish found in Maltese waters).


title: Torta

text: A common example of a sweet Maltese torta is "" (, singular , means almonds in Maltese. Almonds are a very common ingredient in Maltese cuisine, although some people prefer to use marzipan over almonds, either because of ease, taste preference or cost.


title: Torta

text: In Mexico, a "torta" is a kind of sandwich, served on one of two types of white sandwich rolls. The first is similar to a small baguette, and may be referred to as a bolillo, birote, or "pan francés" depending on region. The second is a flat, oblong, soft roll called a telera. Tortas can be eaten cold or hot, and grilled or toasted in a press in the same manner as a Cuban sandwich.


title: Torta

text: Garnishes such as avocado, chili pepper (usually poblano or jalapeño), tomato, and onion are common. The dish is popular throughout Mexico, and is also available anywhere with a large Mexican population. In Northern Mexico, the "torta" is very frequently called lonche by influence of the English "lunch", as it may be eaten during lunch break.


title: Torta

text: A few "tortas" have names whose connections to their fillings is less clear. The "torta ahogada" (meaning "drowned" "torta") of Guadalajara is smothered in a red sauce. Different fillings are available and they may be mixed to create an original "torta". Meanwhile, the "torta cubana" ("Cuban "torta"") is stuffed with a variety of meats, the identity of which varies across Mexico. This "torta" is unrelated to the Cuban sandwich served in Florida and Cuba and is not believed to have any connection to Cuban cuisine at all; instead, it seems to have been named for the place of its invention, "Calle Republica de Cuba" in Mexico City.


title: Torta

text: Due to the practicality of being hand-carried, "tortas" are sold at massive events, such as football matches, parades, and outdoor concerts, but they are also available for breakfast, lunch, or dinner at dedicated establishments or sold as street food by food carts.


title: Torta

text: The origin of the torta is unclear, but some claim it sprouted in Puebla due to Spanish-French interaction; others argue it was a late-arriving example of American influence. "Teleras" (the bread usually used in tortas) were inspired by French baguettes.


title: Daphna Kastner

text: Daphna Kastner (born April 17, 1961) is a Canadian film and television actress, screenwriter, and film director. She is married to American actor Harvey Keitel.


title: Daphna Kastner

text: She and Harvey Keitel secretly married in Jerusalem, while attending the Haifa International Film Festival. In October 2001 they had their official ceremony at the Manhattan home of Keitel's friend, Ian Eckersley. They have a son.


title: Guilty pleasure

text: A guilty pleasure is something, such as a film, a television program, or a piece of music, that one enjoys despite understanding that it is not generally held in high regard, or is seen as unusual or weird. For example, a person may secretly like a film but will admit that particular film is poorly made and/or generally seen as "not good".


title: Guilty pleasure

text: It can also be used to refer to one's taste for foods that are considered to be advisable to avoid, especially for health reasons. For example, coffee, or smoking are considered by many to be guilty pleasures.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use by animals is a phenomenon in which an animal uses any kind of tool in order to achieve a goal such as acquiring food and water, grooming, defence, communication, recreation or construction. Originally thought to be a skill possessed only by humans, some tool use requires a sophisticated level of cognition. There is considerable discussion about the definition of what constitutes a tool and therefore which behaviours can be considered true examples of tool use. A wide range of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects, are considered to use tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Primates are well known for using tools for hunting or gathering food and water, cover for rain, and self-defence. Chimpanzees have often been the object of study in regard to their usage of tools, most famously by Jane Goodall, since these animals are frequently kept in captivity and are closely related to humans. Wild tool use in other primates, especially among apes and monkeys, is considered relatively common, though its full extent remains poorly documented, as many primates in the wild are mainly only observed distantly or briefly when in their natural environments and living without human influence. Some novel tool-use by primates may arise in a localised or isolated manner within certain unique primate cultures, being transmitted and practised among socially connected primates through cultural learning. Many famous researchers, such as Charles Darwin in his book "The Descent of Man", mentioned tool use in monkeys (such as baboons).


title: Tool use by animals

text: Among other mammals, both wild and captive elephants are known to create tools using their trunks and feet, mainly for swatting flies, scratching, plugging up waterholes that they have dug (to close them up again so the water does not evaporate), and reaching food that is out of reach. In addition to primates and elephants, many other social mammals particularly have been observed engaging in tool use. A group of dolphins in Shark Bay uses sea sponges to protect their beaks while foraging. Sea otters will use rocks or other hard objects to dislodge food (such as abalone) and break open shellfish. Many or most mammals of the order Carnivora have been observed using tools, often to trap or break open the shells of prey, as well as for scratching.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Corvids (such as crows, ravens and rooks) are well known for their large brains (among birds) and tool use. New Caledonian crows are among the only animals that create their own tools. They mainly manufacture probes out of twigs and wood (and sometimes metal wire) to catch or impale larvae. Tool use in some birds may be best exemplified in nest intricacy. Tailorbirds manufacture 'pouches' to make their nests in. Some birds, such as weaver birds, build complex nests utilising a diverse array of objects and materials, many of which are specifically chosen by certain birds for their unique qualities. Woodpecker finches insert twigs into trees in order to catch or impale larvae. Parrots may use tools to wedge nuts so that they can crack open the outer shell of nuts without launching away the inner contents. Some birds take advantage of human activity, such as carrion crows in Japan, which drop nuts in front of cars to crack them open.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Several species of fish use tools to hunt and crack open shellfish, extract food that is out of reach, or clear an area for nesting. Among cephalopods (and perhaps uniquely or to an extent unobserved among invertebrates), octopuses are known to utilise tools relatively frequently, such as gathering coconut shells to create a shelter or using rocks to create barriers.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The key to identifying tool use is defining what constitutes a tool. Researchers of animal behaviour have arrived at different formulations.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Different terms have been given to the tool according to whether the tool is altered by the animal. If the "tool" is not held or manipulated by the animal in any way, such as an immobile anvil, objects in a bowerbird's bower, or a bird using bread as bait to catch fish, it is sometimes referred to as a "proto-tool".


title: Tool use by animals

text: When an animal uses a tool that acts on another tool, this has been termed use of a "meta-tool". For example, New Caledonian crows will spontaneously use a short tool to obtain an otherwise inaccessible longer tool that then allows them to extract food from a hole. Similarly, bearded capuchin monkeys will use smaller stones to loosen bigger quartz pebbles embedded in conglomerate rock, which they subsequently use as tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Rarely, animals may use one tool followed by another, for example, bearded capuchins use stones and sticks, or two stones. This is called "associative", "secondary" or "sequential" tool use.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Some animals use other individuals in a way which could be interpreted as tool use, for example, ants crossing water over a bridge of other ants, or weaver ants using conspecifics to glue leaves together. These have been termed "social tools".


title: Tool use by animals

text: Play has been defined as "activity having no immediate benefits and structurally including repetitive or exaggerated actions that may be out of sequence or disordered". When play is discussed in relation to manipulating objects, it is often used in association with the word "tool". Some birds, notably crows, parrots and birds of prey, "play" with objects, many of them playing in flight with such items as stones, sticks and leaves, by letting them go and catching them again before they reach the ground. A few species repeatedly drop stones, apparently for the enjoyment of the sound effects. Many other species of animals, both avian and non-avian, play with objects in a similar manner.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The impaling of prey on thorns by many of the shrikes ("Laniidae") is well known. Several other birds may use spines or forked sticks to anchor a carcass while they flay it with the bill. It has been concluded that "This is an example of a fixed device which serves as an extension of the body, in this case, talons" and is thus a true form of tool use. On the other hand, the use of fixed skewers may not be true tool-use because the thorn (or whatever) is not manipulated by the bird. Leopards perform a similar behaviour by dragging carcasses up trees and caching them in the forks of branches.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Several species of bird, including herons such as the striated heron ("Butorides striatus"), will place bread in water to attract fish. Whether this is tool use is disputed because the bread is not manipulated or held by the bird.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Captive orcas have been observed baiting and catching a bird with a regurgitated fish, as well as showing similar behaviour in the wild.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use by animals may indicate different levels of learning and cognition. For some animals, tool use is largely instinctive and inflexible. For example, the woodpecker finch of the Galápagos Islands use twigs or spines as an essential and regular part of its foraging behaviour, but these behaviours are often quite inflexible and are not applied effectively in different situations. The mechanisms driving other tool use, e.g. chimpanzee tool-use, are still debated. Whilst some may argue that behaviours such as using twigs to "fish" for termites, may be developed by watching others use tools and may even be a true example of animal teaching, studies with captive chimpanzees have found that many of these species-typical behaviours (including termite fishing) are individually learnt by each chimpanzee. Tools may even be used in solving puzzles in which the animal appears to experience a "Eureka moment".


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use has been reported many times in both wild and captive primates, particularly the great apes. The use of tools by primates is varied and includes hunting (mammals, invertebrates, fish), collecting honey, processing food (nuts, fruits, vegetables and seeds), collecting water, weapons and shelter.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool manufacture is much rarer than simple tool use and probably represents higher cognitive functioning. Soon after her initial discovery of tool use, Goodall observed other chimpanzees picking up leafy twigs, stripping off the leaves and using the stems to fish for insects. This change of a leafy twig into a tool was a major discovery. Prior to this, scientists thought that only humans manufactured and used tools, and that this ability was what separated humans from other animals. In 1990, it was claimed the only primate to manufacture tools in the wild was the chimpanzee. However, since then, several primates have been reported as tool makers in the wild.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Both bonobos and chimpanzees have been observed making "sponges" out of leaves and moss that suck up water and using these for grooming. Sumatran orangutans will take a live branch, remove twigs and leaves and sometimes the bark, before fraying or flattening the tip for use on ants or bees. In the wild, mandrills have been observed to clean their ears with modified tools. Scientists filmed a large male mandrill at Chester Zoo (UK) stripping down a twig, apparently to make it narrower, and then using the modified stick to scrape dirt from underneath his toenails. Captive gorillas have made a variety of tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Chimpanzees are sophisticated tool users with behaviours including cracking nuts with stone tools and fishing for ants or termites with sticks. These chimpanzees not only use these sticks to fish out their meal, but they in fact build their own 'tool kits' to do so, as observed in the Republic of Congo. They first use a smaller stick to break open the termite or ant mound, then use a large stick to make holes in the prey's colony, and then insert a 'fishing probe' into the hole and pull out all the termites or ants that have gathered on the stick. There are more limited reports of the closely related bonobo ("Pan paniscus") using tools in the wild; it has been claimed they rarely use tools in the wild although they use tools as readily as chimpanzees when in captivity, It has been reported that females of both chimpanzees and bonobos use tools more avidly than males. Wild chimpanzees predominantly use tools in the context of food acquisition, while wild bonobos appear to use tools mainly for personal care (cleaning, protection from rain) and social purposes. Wild bonobos have been observed using leaves as cover for rain, or the use of branches in social displays.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Research in 2007 showed that common chimpanzees sharpen sticks to use as weapons when hunting mammals. This is considered the first evidence of systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans. Researchers documented 22 occasions when wild chimpanzees on a savanna in Senegal fashioned sticks into "spears" to hunt lesser bushbabies ("Galago senegalensis"). In each case, a chimpanzee modified a branch by breaking off one or two ends and, frequently using its teeth, sharpened the stick. The tools, on average, were about 60 cm (24 in) long and 1.1 cm (0.4 in) in circumference. The chimpanzee then jabbed the spear into hollows in tree trunks where bushbabies sleep. There was a single case in which a chimpanzee successfully extracted a bushbaby with the tool. It has been suggested that the word "spear" is an overstatement that makes the chimpanzees seem too much like early humans, and that the term "bludgeon" is more accurate, since the point of the tool may not be particularly sharp. This behaviour was seen more frequently in females, particularly adolescent females, and young chimps in general, than in adult males.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Chimpanzees often eat the marrow of long bones of colobus monkeys with the help of small sticks, after opening the ends of the bones with their teeth. A juvenile female was observed to eat small parts of the brain of an intact skull that she could not break open by inserting a small stick through the foramen magnum. On another occasion, an adult female used three sticks to clean the orbits of a colobus monkey skull after she had just eaten the eyes.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In Gombe National Park in 1960, Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee, David Greybeard, poking pieces of grass into a termite mound and then raising the grass to his mouth. After he left, Goodall approached the mound and repeated the behaviour because she was unsure what David was doing. She found that the termites bit onto the grass with their jaws. David had been using the grass as a tool to "fish" or "dip" for termites. Soon after this initial discovery of tool use, Goodall observed David and other chimpanzees picking up leafy twigs, stripping off the leaves, and using the stems to fish for insects. This modification of a leafy twig into a tool was a major discovery: previously, scientists thought that only humans made and used tools, and that this was what separated humans from other animals.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Other studies of the Gombe chimps show that young females and males learn to fish for termites differently. Female chimps learn to fish for termites earlier and better than the young males. Females also spend more time fishing while at the mounds with their mothers—males spend more time playing. When they are adults, females need more termite protein because with young to care for, they cannot hunt the way males can.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Populations differ in the prevalence of tool use for fishing for invertebrates. Chimpanzees in the Tai National Park only sometimes use tools, whereas Gombe chimpanzees rely almost exclusively on tools for their intake of driver ants. This may be due to difference in the rewards gained by tool use: Gombe chimpanzees collect 760 ants/min compared to 180 ants/min for the Tai chimpanzees.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Some chimpanzees use tools to hunt large bees ("Xylocopa" sp.) which make nests in dead branches on the ground or in trees. To get to the grubs and the honey, the chimpanzee first tests for the presence of adults by probing the nest entrance with a stick. If present, adult bees block the entrance with their abdomens, ready to sting. The chimpanzee then disables them with the stick to make them fall out and eats them rapidly. Afterwards, the chimpanzee opens the branch with its teeth to obtain the grubs and the honey.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Chimpanzees have even been observed using two tools: a stick to dig into an ant nest and a "brush" made from grass stems with their teeth to collect the ants.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Honey of four bee species is eaten by chimpanzees. Groups of chimpanzees fish with sticks for the honey after having tried to remove what they can with their hands. They usually extract with their hands honeycombs from undisturbed hives of honey bees and run away from the bees to quietly eat their catch. In contrast, hives that have already been disturbed, either through the falling of the tree or because of the intervention of other predators, are cleaned of the remaining honey with fishing tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tai chimpanzees crack open nuts with rocks, but there is no record of Gombe chimpanzees using rocks in this way. After opening nuts by pounding with a hammer, parts of the kernels may be too difficult to reach with the teeth or fingernails, and some individuals use sticks to remove these remains, instead of pounding the nut further with the hammer as other individuals do: a relatively rare combination of using two different tools. Hammers for opening nuts may be either wood or stone.


title: Tool use by animals

text: When chimpanzees cannot reach water that has formed in hollows high up inside trees, they have been observed taking a handful of leaves, chewing them, and dipping this "sponge" into the pool to suck out the water. Both bonobos and chimpanzees have also been observed making "sponges" out of leaves and moss that suck up water and are used as grooming tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Orangutans were first observed using tools in the wild in 1994 in the northwest corner of Sumatra. As with the chimpanzees, orangutans use tools made from branches and leaves to scratch, scrape, wipe, sponge, swat, fan, hook, probe, scoop, pry, chisel, hammer, cover, cushion and amplify. They will break off a tree branch that is about 30 cm long, snap off the twigs, fray one end and then use the stick to dig in tree holes for termites. Sumatran orangutans use a variety of tools—up to 54 types for extracting insects or honey, and as many as 20 types for opening or preparing fruits such as the hard to access "Neesia Malayana". They also use an 'autoerotic tool'—a stick which they use to stimulate the genitals and masturbate (both male and female). There have been reports that individuals in both captivity and in the wild use tools held between the lips or teeth, rather than in the hands. In captivity, orangutans have been taught to chip stone to make and use Oldowan tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Orangutans living in Borneo scavenge fish that wash up along the shore and scoop catfish out of small ponds for fresh meals. Over two years, anthropologist Anne Russon observed orangutans learning to jab sticks at catfish to scare them out of the ponds and in to their waiting hands. Although orangutans usually fished alone, Russon observed pairs of apes catching catfish on a few occasions. On the island of Kaja in Borneo, a male orangutan was observed using a pole apparently trying to spear or bludgeon fish. This individual had seen humans fishing with spears. Although not successful, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals' fishing lines.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Sumatran orangutans use sticks to acquire seeds from a particular fruit. When the fruit of the "Neesia" tree ripens, its hard, ridged husk softens until it falls open. Inside are seeds that are highly desirable to the orangutans, but they are surrounded by fibreglass-like hairs that are painful if eaten. A "Neesia"-eating orangutan will select a 12 cm stick, strip off the bark, and then carefully collect the hairs with it. Once the fruit is safe, the ape will eat the seeds using the stick or its fingers. Sumatran orangutans will use a stick to poke a bees' nest wall, move it around and catch the honey.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Orangutans have been observed using sticks to apparently measure the depth of water. It has been reported that orangutans use tools for a wide range of purposes including using leaves as protective gloves or napkins, using leafy branches to swat insects or gather water, and building sun or rain covers above the nests used for resting. It has been reported that a Sumatran orangutan used a large leaf as an umbrella in a tropical rainstorm.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Orangutans produce an alarm call known as a "kiss squeak" when they encounter a predator like a snake. Sometimes, orangutans will strip leaves from a branch and hold them in front of their mouth when making the sound. It has been found this lowers the maximum frequency of the sound i.e. makes it deeper, and in addition, smaller orangutans are more likely to use the leaves. It has been suggested they use the leaves to make themselves sound bigger than they really are, the first documented case of an animal using a tool to manipulate sound.


title: Tool use by animals

text: There are few reports of gorillas using tools in the wild. Western lowland gorillas have been observed using sticks to apparently measure the depth of water and as "walking sticks" to support their posture when crossing deeper water. An adult female used a detached trunk from a small shrub as a stabiliser during food gathering, and another used a log as a bridge. One possible explanation for the absence of observed tool use in wild gorillas is that they are less dependent on foraging techniques that require the use of tools, since they exploit food resources differently from chimpanzees. Whereas chimpanzees and orangutans feeding involves tools such as hammers to crack open nuts and sticks to fish for termites, gorillas access these foods by breaking nuts with their teeth and smashing termite mounds with their hands.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Captive western lowland gorillas have been observed to threaten each other with sticks and larger pieces of wood, while others use sticks for hygienic purposes. Some females have attempted to use logs as ladders. In another group of captive gorillas, several individuals were observed throwing sticks and branches into a tree, apparently to knock down leaves and seeds. Gorillas at Prague zoo have used tools in several ways, including using wood wool as "slippers" when walking on the snow or to cross a wet section of the floor.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use has been observed in at least 32 monkey species including individuals that are captive, free, and semi-free range. These observations entail established, long term use of tools such as baboons using items to hit humans as well as more elusive, rare use like the howler monkeys’ use of leaves to treat wounds. Use is further nuanced by if a species uses objects they have found or objects that they have modified. Of the 32 species that exhibit tool use, 11 of these exhibit object modification to make tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In a captive environment, capuchins readily insert a stick into a tube containing viscous food that clings to the stick, which they then extract and lick. Capuchins also use a stick to push food from the centre of a tube retrieving the food when it reaches the far end, and as a rake to sweep objects or food toward themselves. The black-striped capuchin ("Sapajus libidinosus") was the first non-ape primate for which tool use was documented in the wild; individuals were observed cracking nuts by placing them on a stone anvil and hitting them with another large stone (hammer). Similar hammer-and-anvil use has been observed in other wild capuchins including robust capuchin monkeys (genus "Sapajus") It may take a capuchin up to 8 years to master this skill. The monkeys often transport hard fruits, stones, nuts and even oysters to an anvil for this purpose. Capuchins also use stones as digging tools for probing the substrate and sometimes for excavating tubers. Wild black-striped capuchin use sticks to flush prey from inside rock crevices. Robust capuchins are also known to sometimes rub defensive secretions from arthropods over their bodies before eating them; such secretions are believed to act as natural insecticides.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Baboons have also exhibited extensive tool use, seen within research on the chacma baboon ("Papio ursinus") troops living on the desert floor of the Kuiseb Canyon in South West Africa. These baboons intentionally dropped stones over cliffs. Researchers have seen other types of tool use such as raking with tools and the use of barrels to climb in baboons.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In long-tailed macaques, tool use has been extensively observed, particularly within foraging and grooming habits. These tools have both been synthetic and organic in origin and their use varies greatly depending on populations. The research done within these populations and their tool use has been used to draw conclusions that high levels of sensorimotor intelligence help evolve innovative tool use.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The above examples reveal plentiful examples of primate tool use. However, it is important to recognise that nonhuman primates, compared with humans, have inherent limitations in their tool complexity, due to limitations in the ways in which the innovations underlying these complexities are constructed. Unlike human tools, which increase in complexity due to continuing cultural evolution, nonhuman primates' tool complexity is biologically restricted to those within what has been dubbed zone(s) of latent solutions. Tools within this zone can be individually and socially learned (triggered), but tools outside this zone cannot. This renders non-human primates unable to improve their tools in complexity beyond this zone, towards levels of human technology.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Every animal navigates their material environment through the lens of their biological predispositions and exaptations. With the example of primates using tools, it is necessary to consider the biological setting in which each primate species interacts with their tools. Every primate innately possesses a zone of solutions to ecological problems that can develop in interaction with a given environment, known as their zone of latent solutions. This package of skills can be a tight fit for the primate's environment - through adaptations and/or exaptations - and contain packages of potential solutions within the primate's existing and potential behaviour. Tool use within this zone can likewise be expressed via genetic predispositions, through trial and error learning, and all this may be triggered by social learning but without this social learning transmitting these skills themselves. All this may lead some to the conclusion that all primates have a human-like capacity to copy abilities to make and/or use complex tools from each other. However, nonhuman primate tool use is likely constrained to those tools within each species' zone of latent solutions - unless human training expands this zone.


title: Tool use by animals

text: For example, every chimpanzee has the capacity to learn how to use tools such as nut cracking and poking sticks to capture and consume ants. These behaviours are likely in the chimpanzees' ZLS, and therefore belong to every chimpanzee’s potential biological toolkit. Yet, many may require a social "push", i.e. a trigger, before they themselves develop this behaviour (individually). However, chimpanzees, and every other great ape, seem to be unable to learn tool use behaviour outside of their ZLS - i.e. in cases where a behaviour would not just be triggered, but copied. For example, no species of great ape apart from humans (including chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) are able to spontaneously produce loop-like technology under any condition, even with human teaching. Since loops fall securely outside of great apes’ ZLS—perhaps as there was never any use for this behaviour in their ecological environment—this behaviour is unable to be learned socially by non-human primates.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Humans navigate our material world through the lens of cultural learning. Cultural learning is defined as high-complexity social learning, where tools and behaviours are invented on top of previous inventions which have previously been copied and taught - leading to cultural refinement across generations via the so-called cultural ratchet effect. As cultural animals, we regularly invent new tools based on our acquired cultural background, we may pay attention to specific models, such as the most successful individuals (and various other social learning biases), and in this way the best tool practices may increase in frequency and stick around in our collective repertoire until better designed ones are built on top. This cultural learning allows human tool complexity and efficiency to “ratchet up” through cultural generations, building tools of increased complexity over time, which allows the products (behaviours and/or artefacts) to accumulate over time in a process known as “cumulative culture.” Nonhuman primate tools, contrarily, are unable to ratchet up in complexity over time as these animals do not copy tool design that they themselves could not have independently created from scratch, and therefore primates other than humans are restricted to those tools that reside within their zone(s) of latent solutions.


title: Tool use by animals

text: While human tools and technologies currently still increase in complexity at an exponential rate, for instance evolving from stone tools to rocket ships and supercomputers within a few thousand years, nonhuman primate tools show little evidence of improvement or underlying technological change in their underlying know-how across generations. For example, archaeological evidence indicates that the basic chimpanzee nut-cracking know-how has been static for at least the past 4300 years. This consistency and stasis in tool behaviour suggests that chimpanzee tools are not refined or improved across generations with a ratcheting-up effect, but rather reinvented by every single chimpanzee generation. That is, non-human primates must "re-invent the wheel" at every generation anew.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Humans differ from nonhuman primates in how we perceive tools and their underlying know-how. Humans, as a cultural species, are predisposed to copy the know-how (methods, relationships and processes) behind tools, while our nonhuman primate relatives are predisposed to instead individually innovate their tools from scratch or to be merely socially triggered to re-innovate the tools used by others (who, ultimately had to innovate them from scratch). For example, when both human children and chimpanzees (both aged 2-4 years) are shown solutions to open a box with observably unnecessary steps involved, human children consistently copy even the unnecessary steps, while chimpanzees bypass unnecessary steps and go straightforwardly to their natural tendencies of engaging with the box, such as using a stick to poke it. This difference between chimpanzees and humans suggests that chimpanzees tend to see tools through the lens of their own individual approaches, while humans tend to see tools through the lens of the underlying know-how, even where their own tendencies mismatch the observed know-how. Nonhuman primates are predisposed to re-innovate technologies that already exist in their zone of latent solutions, while, as a cumulative cultural species, humans learn know-how culturally that clearly is beyond the human zone of latent solutions. Over time, and across generations, this has led humans to have culturally created billions of know-how types, with the vast majority being beyond the human zone of latent solutions. Other apes, in contrast, seem to draw from a range of know-how that counts in mere thousands.


title: Tool use by animals

text: While humans and nonhuman primates are both tool users, both their expression and their capacities for tool use are vastly different. The zone(s) of latent solutions of nonhuman primates, and the cultural ratcheting-up of human technology rest on different underlying processes with vastly different capacities for complexity and improvement over time. While humans copy know-how that is supraindividual, other primates do not. It is currently unclear whether the zone of latent solutions approach is restricted to non-human primates, or whether it may help explain also tool use in many (or all) other animals. One step towards determining whether other animals' tool use is likely based on latent solutions or is instead due to cultural evolution of know-how is to determine - for each species examined - whether similar tool use exists in more than one population of the same species, where these populations are culturally unconnected (the so-called "method of local restriction" ). Whenever similar tool use shows in such culturally unconnected populations of the same species, this makes it more likely that the tool behaviour is a latent solution. Likewise, if the same tool use appears in one or more populations of one or more closely related species, this is some (more indirect) evidence that it is a latent solution - in all the related species in which it is shown.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Elephants show an ability to manufacture and use tools with their trunk and feet. Both wild and captive Asian elephants ("Elephas maximus") use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves. Eight of 13 captive Asian elephants, maintained under a naturalistic environment, modified branches and switched with the altered branch, indicating this species is capable of the more rare behaviour of tool manufacture. There were different styles of modification of the branches, the most common of which was holding the main stem with the front foot and pulling off a side branch or distal end with the trunk. Elephants have been observed digging holes to drink water, then ripping bark from a tree, chewing it into the shape of a ball thereby manufacturing a "plug" to fill in the hole, and covering it with sand to avoid evaporation. They would later go back to the spot to drink.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Asian elephants may use tools in insightful problem solving. A captive male was observed moving a box to a position where it could be stood upon to reach food that had been deliberately hung out of reach.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Elephants have also been known to drop large rocks onto an electric fence to either ruin the fence or cut off the electricity.


title: Tool use by animals

text: A community of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins ("Tursiops" sp.) in Shark Bay, Western Australia, made up of approximately 41-54 animals, are known to use conical sponges ("Echinodictyum mesenterinum") as tools while foraging. This behaviour, termed "sponging", occurs when a dolphin breaks off a sponge and wears it over its rostrum while foraging on the seafloor. Sponging behaviour typically begins in the second year of life. During sponging, dolphins mainly target fish that lack swim bladders and burrow in the substrate. Therefore, the sponge may be used to protect their rostrums as they forage in a niche where echolocation and vision are less effective hunting techniques. Dolphins tend to carry the same sponge for multiple surfacings but sometimes change sponges. Spongers typically are more solitary, take deeper dives, and spend more time foraging than non-spongers. Despite these costs, spongers have similar calving success to non-spongers.


title: Tool use by animals

text: There is evidence that both ecological and cultural factors predict which dolphins use sponges as tools. Sponging occurs more frequently in areas with higher distribution of sponges, which tends to occur in deeper water channels. Sponging is heavily sex-biased to females. Genetic analyses suggest that all spongers are descendants of a single matriline, suggesting cultural transmission of the use of sponges as tools. Sponging may be socially learned from mother to offspring. Social grouping behaviour suggests homophily (the tendency to associate with similar others) among dolphins that share socially learned skills such as sponge tool use. Sponging has only been observed in Shark Bay.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay have also been observed carrying conch shells. In this behaviour, dolphins insert their rostrum into the shell's aperture. Although this behaviour is rare, it appears to be used for foraging. Dolphins appear to use the conch shells to scoop fish from the substrate then carry the shell to retrieve the fish near the surface.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Under each foreleg, the sea otter ("Enhydra lutris") has a loose pouch of skin that extends across the chest. In this pouch (preferentially the left side), the animal stores collected food to bring to the surface. This pouch also holds a rock, unique to the otter, that is used to break open shellfish and clams. To open hard shells, it may pound its prey with both paws against the rock which it places on its chest. Furthermore, sea otters will use large stones to pry an abalone off its rock; they will hammer the abalone shell with observed rates of 45 blows in 15 seconds or 180 rpm, and do it in two or three dives. Releasing an abalone, which can cling to rock with a force equal to 4,000 times its own body weight, requires multiple dives by the otter. Furthermore, out of the thirteen currently known species of otters, at least 10 demonstrate stone handling behaviour, suggesting that otters may have a genetic predisposition to manipulate stones.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Wild banded mongooses ("Mungos mungo") regularly use anvils to open food items with a hard shell such as rhinoceros beetles, bird eggs, snail shells or pupating dung beetles. They use a range of anvils commonly including rocks and the stems of trees, but will also use the side-walls of gullys and even dried elephant dung. Pups as young as 2 months of age are already showing the behavioural patterns associated with using an anvil, however, successful smashing is usually shown in individuals older than 6 months of age.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Honey badgers both wild and captive have been filmed manipulating various objects to assist them in making climbs, including making mud balls and stacking them.


title: Tool use by animals

text: North American badgers ("Taxidea taxus") hunt Richardson's ground squirrels ("Spermophilus richardsonii"). The most common hunting technique is excavation of burrow systems, but plugging of openings into ground-squirrel tunnels accounts for 5–23% of hunting actions. Badgers usually use soil from around the tunnel opening, or soil dragged 30–270 cm from a nearby mound to plug tunnels. The least common (6%), but most novel, form of plugging used by 1 badger involved movement of 37 objects from distances of 20–105 cm to plug openings into 23 ground-squirrel tunnels on 14 nights.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In 2011, researchers at the Dingo Discovery and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, filmed a dingo manipulating a table and using this to get food.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Molting brown bears in Alaska have been observed using rocks to exfoliate. There is also evidence that polar bears throw rocks and big pieces of ice at walruses to kill them.


title: Tool use by animals

text: A family of captive Visayan warty pigs have been observed using a flat piece of bark as a digging tool. Horses have also been observed using different tools.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use is found in at least thirty-three different families of birds. According to Jones and Kamil's definition, a bearded vulture dropping a bone on a rock would not be considered using a tool since the rock cannot be seen as an extension of the body. However, the use of a rock manipulated using the beak to crack an ostrich egg would qualify the Egyptian vulture as a tool user. , including parrots, corvids and a range of passerines, have been noted as tool users.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Many birds (and other animals) build nests. It can be argued that this behaviour constitutes tool use according to the definitions given above; the birds "carry objects (twigs, leaves) for future use", the shape of the formed nest prevents the eggs from rolling away and thereby "extends the physical influence realized by the animal", and the twigs are bent and twisted to shape the nest, i.e. "modified to fit a purpose". The complexity of bird nests varies markedly, perhaps indicating a range in the sophistication of tool use. For example, compare the highly complex structures of weaver birds to the simple mats of herbaceous matter with a central cup constructed by gulls, and it is noteworthy that some birds do not build nests, e.g. emperor penguins. The classification of nests as tools has been disputed on the basis that the completed nest, or burrow, is not held or manipulated.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Prey-dropping behaviour is seen in many species of birds. Species of crows such as Carrion, Northwestern, American, and New Caledonian crows exhibit this behaviour using different prey. Gulls, particularly Kelp, Western, Black-Headed and Sooty gulls are also known to drop mussels from a height as a foraging adaptation. This behaviour is demonstrated by dropping prey from a height onto a hard substrate in order to break the prey's shell open. Several variables such as prey size, substrate type, kleptoparasitism, etc. can influence the behaviour of prey dropping in various species.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Perhaps the best known and most studied example of an avian tool user is the woodpecker finch ("Camarhynchus pallidus") from the Galápagos Islands. If the bird uncovers prey in bark which is inaccessible, the bird then flies off to fetch a cactus spine which it may use in one of three different ways: as a goad to drive out an active insect (without necessarily touching it); as a spear with which to impale a slow-moving larva or similar animal; or as an implement with which to push, bring towards, nudge or otherwise maneuver an inactive insect from a crevice or hole. Tools that do not exactly fit the purpose are worked by the bird and adapted for the function, thus making the finch a "tool maker" as well as a "tool user". Some individuals have been observed to use a different type of tool with novel functional features such as barbed twigs from blackberry bushes, a plant that is not native to the islands. The twigs were first modified by removing side twigs and leaves and then used such that the barbs helped drag prey out of tree crevices.


title: Tool use by animals

text: There is a genetic predisposition for tool use in this species, which is then refined by individual trial-and-error learning during a sensitive phase early in development. This means that, rather than following a stereotypical behavioural pattern, tool use can be modified and adapted by learning.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The importance of tool use by woodpecker finch species differs between vegetation zones. In the arid zone, where food is limited and hard to access, tool use is essential, especially during the dry season. Up to half of the finches' prey is acquired with the help of tools, making them even more routine tool users than chimpanzees. The tools allow them to extract large, nutritious insect larvae from tree holes, making tool use more profitable than other foraging techniques. In contrast, in the humid zone, woodpecker finches rarely use tools, since food availability is high and prey is more easily obtainable. Here, the time and energy costs of tool use would be too high.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Corvids are a family of birds characterised by relatively large brains, remarkable behavioural plasticity (especially highly innovative foraging behaviour) and well-developed cognitive abilities.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Carrion crows were observed on Eden estuary in Scotland between February and March 1988 to investigate their dropping strategies with mussels. Carrion crows selected larger mussels and dropped them from a height of ~8m onto hard substrate. The height of mussels dropped were lower than what researchers expected, which may be due to difficulty locating prey post dropping as well as trying to prevent kleptoparasitism (stealing of food by other scavengers). Behaviour of prey dropping seen in carrion crows suggest that the size of prey, substrate surfaces, and height drop influence their behaviour. Therefore, it can be inferred that other species may exhibit different behaviour strategies based on their prey, and environment.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Different variables such as, prey size, shell breakability, predators, substrate, and height affect the behaviour of prey dropping for different species. For instance, selection of prey may depend on substrate used in that environment. Northwestern crows are another example of birds that drop prey from a height onto the ground. Northwestern crows flew vertically up, releasing whelks and immediately diving after it. Similar to the carrion crows, northwestern crows also preferred larger whelks over smaller ones and selected sizes by sight and weight by picking whelks up with their bill. Unlike Carrion crows, Northwestern crows exhibited a unique response upon releasing prey. After releasing whelks, northwestern crows instantly dove after it whereas carrion crows were not as diligent in following and immediately retrieving prey. This behaviour is likely due to northwestern crows minimising and potentially avoiding kleptoparasitism. It is unclear why carrion crows have a different response to prey being released than northwestern crows, however, these differences in behaviour could potentially be due to higher predation in areas that northwestern crows inhabit, or increase in food sources in areas inhabited by carrion crows.


title: Tool use by animals

text: American crows are another of several species of birds that possess prey dropping behaviour. When performing the study of prey dropping in American crows, the number of drops to crack a walnut decreased as the height of prey dropped increased and crows had more success when dropping walnuts onto asphalt compared to soil. Prey loss almost always occurred through kleptoparasitism however, there is a lack of evidence that shows kleptoparasitism being directly affected by height of prey dropped.


title: Tool use by animals

text: New Caledonian crows ("Corvus moneduloides") are perhaps the most studied corvid with respect to tool-use.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In the wild, they have been observed using sticks as tools to extract insects from tree bark. The birds poke the insects or larvae until they bite the stick in defence and can then be drawn out. This "larva fishing" is very similar to the "termite fishing" practised by chimpanzees. In the wild, they also manufacture tools from twigs, grass stems or similar plant structures, whereas captive individuals have been observed to use a variety of materials, including feathers and garden wire. Stick tools can either be non-hooked—being more or less straight and requiring only little modification—or hooked. Construction of the more complex hooked tools typically involves choosing a forked twig from which parts are removed and the remaining end is sculpted and sharpened. New Caledonian crows also use pandanus tools, made from barbed leaf edges of screw pines ("Pandanus" spp.) by precise ripping and cutting although the function of the pandanus tools is not understood.


title: Tool use by animals

text: While young birds in the wild normally learn to make stick tools from elders, a laboratory New Caledonian crow named "Betty" was filmed spontaneously improvising a hooked tool from a wire. It was known that this individual had no prior experience as she had been hand-reared. New Caledonian crows have been observed to use an easily available small tool to get a less easily available longer tool, and then use this to get an otherwise inaccessible longer tool to get food that was out of reach of the shorter tools. One bird, "Sam", spent 110 seconds inspecting the apparatus before completing each of the steps without any mistakes. This is an example of sequential tool use, which represents a higher cognitive function compared to many other forms of tool use and is the first time this has been observed in non-trained animals. Tool use has been observed in a non-foraging context, providing the first report of multi-context tool use in birds. Captive New Caledonian crows have used stick tools to make first contact with objects that were novel and hence potentially dangerous, while other individuals have been observed using a tool when food was within reach but placed next to a model snake. It has been claimed "Their [New Caledonian crow] tool-making skills exceed those of chimpanzees and are more similar to human tool manufacture than those of any other animal."


title: Tool use by animals

text: New Caledonian crows have also been observed performing tool use behaviour that had hitherto not been described in non-human animals. The behaviour is termed "insert-and-transport tool use". This involves the crow inserting a stick into an object and then walking or flying away holding both the tool and object on the tool.


title: Tool use by animals

text: New Caledonian crows also demonstrate prey dropping behaviour. The first recorded evidence of this species of crow demonstrating prey dropping behaviour on the snail "Placostylus fibratus" in a 2013 study. New Caledonian crows dropped snails from a particular height onto rocky beds and video recording showed one crow repeating this four times from the same height.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Captive individuals of the critically endangered Hawaiian crow ("Corvus hawaiiensis") use tools to extract food from holes drilled in logs. The juveniles exhibit tool use without training or social learning from adults. As 104 of the 109 surviving members of the species were tested, it is believed to be a species-wide ability.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Other corvid species, such as rooks ("Corvus frugilegus"), can also make and use tools in the laboratory, showing a degree of sophistication similar to that of New Caledonian crows. While not confirmed to have used tools in the wild, captive blue jays ("Cyanocitta cristata") have been observed using strips of newspaper as tools to obtain food.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Various corvids have reached for stones to place in a vessel of water so as to raise the surface level to drink from it or access a floating treat, enacting Aesop's Fable of The Crow and the Pitcher.


title: Tool use by animals

text: A wild American crow ("Corvus brachyrhynchos") has been observed to modify and use a piece of wood as a probe. Green jays ("Cyanocorax yncas") have been observed using sticks as tools to extract insects from tree bark. Large-billed crows in urban Japan have been filmed using an innovative technique to crack hard-shelled nuts by dropping them onto crosswalks (pedestrian crossings) and letting them be run over and cracked by cars. They then retrieve the cracked nuts when the cars are stopped at the red light. In some towns in America, crows drop walnuts onto busy streets so that the cars will crack the nuts. Hooded crows ("Corvus cornix") use bait to catch fish. Individuals (who may have observed fish being fed bread by humans) will place the bread in the water to attract fish.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Common ravens ("Corvus corax") are one of only a few species who make their own toys. They have been observed breaking off twigs to play with socially. A corvid has been filmed sliding repeatedly down a snow-covered roof while balancing on a lid or tray. Another incidence of play in birds has been filmed showing a corvid playing with a table tennis ball in partnership with a dog, a rare example of tool use for the purposes of play. Blue jays, like other corvids, are highly curious and are considered intelligent birds. Young blue jays playfully snatch brightly coloured or reflective objects, such as bottle caps or pieces of aluminium foil, and carry them around until they lose interest.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The tailorbird (genus "Orthotomus") takes a large growing leaf (or two or more small ones) and with its sharp bill pierces holes into opposite edges. It then grasps spider silk, silk from cocoons, or plant fibres with its bill, pulls this "thread" through the two holes, and knots it to prevent it from pulling through (although the use of knots is disputed). This process is repeated several times until the leaf or leaves forms a pouch or cup in which the bird then builds its nest. The leaves are sewn together in such a way that the upper surfaces are outwards making the structure difficult to see. The punctures made on the edge of the leaves are minute and do not cause browning of the leaves, further aiding camouflage. The processes used by the tailorbird have been classified as sewing, rivetting, lacing and matting. Once the stitch is made, the fibres fluff out on the outside and in effect they are more like rivets. Sometimes the fibres from one rivet are extended into an adjoining puncture and appear more like sewing. There are many variations in the nest and some may altogether lack the cradle of leaves. It is believed that only the female performs this sewing behaviour. The Latin binomial name of the common tailorbird, "Orthotomus sutorius", means "straight-edged" "cobbler" rather than tailor. Some birds of the genus "Prinia" also practise this sewing and stitching behaviour.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Brown-headed nuthatches ("Sitta pusilla") have been observed to methodically use bark pieces to remove other flakes of bark from a tree. The birds insert the bark piece underneath an attached bark scale, using it like a wedge and lever, to expose hiding insects. Occasionally, they reuse the same piece of bark several times and sometimes even fly short distances carrying the bark flake in their beak. The evolutionary origin of this tool use might be related to these birds frequently wedging seeds into cracks in the bark to hammer them open with their beak, which can lead to bark coming off.


title: Tool use by animals

text: A Crested lark ("Galerida cristata") has been photographed apparently holding in its bill a stone chip it was reportedly using to dislodge prey from paving joints.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Kea, a highly inquisitive New Zealand mountain parrot, have been filmed stripping twigs and inserting them into gaps in box-like stoat traps to trigger them. Apparently, the kea's only reward is the banging sound of the trap being set off. In a similarly rare example of tool preparation, a captive Tanimbar corella ("Cacatua goffiniana") was observed breaking off and "shaping" splinters of wood and small sticks to create rakes that were then used to retrieve otherwise unavailable food items on the other side of the aviary mesh. This behaviour has been filmed.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Many owners of household parrots have observed their pets using various tools to scratch various parts of their bodies. These tools include discarded feathers, bottle caps, popsicle sticks, matchsticks, cigarette packets and nuts in their shells.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Hyacinth macaws ("Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus") have been repeatedly observed to use tools when breaking open nuts, for example, pieces of wood being used as a wedge. Several birds have wrapped a piece of leaf around a nut to hold it in place. This behaviour is also shown by palm cockatoos ("Probosciger aterrimus"). It seems that the hyacinth macaw has an innate tendency to use tools during manipulation of nuts, as naïve juveniles tried out a variety of objects in combination with nuts.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use behaviour has been observed in the kea, wherein a bird named Bruce, who has a broken upper beak, wedged pebbles between his tongue and lower mandible and then utilised this arrangement to aid with his preening habits.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use behaviour has been observed in the Tanimbar corella in captivity. It was reported in November 2012 by Professor Alice Aursperg of the University of Vienna, that a cock bird named Figaro was observed spontaneously shaping splinters of wood and small sticks in order to create rakes that were then utilised to extend his reach and retrieve otherwise unavailable food items located upon the other side of his aviary mesh.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In July 2013, the results of a joint study involving scientists from University of Oxford, the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute, again involving the Tanimbar corellas of the Vienna Goffin Lab, were announced. It was discovered that the birds possessed the ability to solve complex mechanical problems, in one case spontaneously working out how to open a five-part locking mechanism in sequence to retrieve a food item. The corellas were able to very quickly adapt their behaviour and again open the lock when the mechanism sections were modified or re-ordered, demonstrating an apparent concept of working towards a particular goal and knowledge of the way in which physical objects act upon each other – rather than merely an ability to repeat a learned sequence of actions.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Further research in 2020 by Auersperg's team compared the problem-solving ability of the captive-bred Goffins at the Goffin Lab with wild birds caught in Tanimbar and exposed to the same experimental conditions - in which the birds were placed in an "innovation arena" and presented a series of 20 different tasks (e.g. pressing a button, turning a wheel, pulling out a drawer, removing a twig, overturning a cup, opening a clip, etc.) which they could choose to partake in, in order to obtain a food reward. It was found that while the wild Goffins were less inclined to interact with the test apparatus, those that did solved the presented tasks at a similar rate to the captive-bred birds.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Wild Goffins were also observed shaping sticks of different dimensions in order to create a series of tools which enabled them to eat sea mango seeds.


title: Tool use by animals

text: When an Egyptian vulture ("Neophron percnopterus") encounters a large egg, it takes a stone into its beak and forcefully throws it at the egg until the shell is broken, usually taking a few minutes. This behaviour, first reported in 1966, seems to be largely innate and is displayed by naïve individuals. Its origin could be related to the throwing of eggs; rounded (egg-like) stones are preferred to jagged ones.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In a small population in Bulgaria, Egyptian vultures use twigs to collect sheep wool for padding their nests. Although both twigs and wool can serve as nesting material, this appears to be deliberate tool use. The birds approached bits of discarded wool with a twig in their beak, which was then either used as a rake, to gather the wool into heaps, or to roll up the wool. Wool was collected only after shearing or simulated shearing of sheep had taken place, but not after wool had simply been deposited in sheep enclosures.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In Australia the black kite ("Milvus migrans"), whistling kite ("Haliastur sphenurus") and unrelated brown falcon ("Falco berigora") are not only attracted to wildfires to source food, but will variously use their beaks or talons to carry burning sticks so as to spread fire, complicating human efforts to contain fires using firebreaks.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Burrowing owls ("Athene cunicularia") frequently collect mammalian dung, which they use as a bait to attract dung beetles, a major item of prey.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Gulls have been known to drop mollusc shells on paved and hard surfaces such as roads. Their dropping habits are similar to corvids in the sense that repeated drops allow gulls to have easier access towards their prey. Certain species (e.g. the herring gull) have exhibited tool use behaviour, using pieces of bread as bait to catch goldfish, for example.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Kelp gulls are one of the well-known gulls that have displayed prey-dropping. These gulls are known to learn their prey-dropping skills by studying other gulls around them, and are able to refine this behaviour to benefit themselves. They commonly break their prey on hard surfaces, such as rocks, asphalt, and even roofs of houses and cars. Kelp gulls normally drop black mussels, and drop-sites are normally chosen based on how well it would break the prey as well as the amount of kleptoparasites that are in the area, as other gulls may take the opportunity to steal an individuals’ prey. Dropping behaviour occurs at any time of year but is more prevalent in the winter during low-tide hours, most likely due to having more access to larger mussels. Kelp gulls will fly over 0.5 km to a preferred substrate on which to break their prey. Height from which the prey is dropped will increase after each drop of the prey. Once the prey is dropped, a gull will descend as quickly as possible to recover its prey. This is likely to prevent kleptoparasitism, which is very common in prey-dropping. On average, a kelp gull will descend at an average of 4 m/s in comparison to the prey’s fall of 5 m/s, which allows the gull to reach the ground about 0.5 seconds after the prey has landed onto the surface. Adult kelp gulls have a higher success rate of breaking and obtaining their prey while prey dropping than juvenile kelp gulls.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Western gulls are one of the many species of gulls that have been observed to drop their prey on the ground. A study observed that a major factor influencing dropping behaviour in these gulls had to do with the mass and size of the prey being dropped. When performing a study using different sizes of Washington clams, smaller clams were normally pecked at. The larger clams however were dropped unless they were too heavy to carry, usually exceeding 268 grams in weight. Drop behaviour differs between adult and immature western gulls. All adult western gulls that have been studied displayed prey dropping behaviour, and dropped from an average of 118 metres away from where they were originally retrieved. In the study, dropping occurred either over mudflats or a parking lot, which correlated with weight of the clams, which average clam weights were 106.7 g and 134.3 g respectively. Immature gulls meanwhile are much more clumsy with their dropping, and only 55% of juvenile western gulls that were observed displayed this behaviour. Juvenile gulls also did not seem to have a correlation between the weight of the clam and the height the clam was dropped at, though it is noted that the younger gulls seemed to drop their prey at much lower heights than their older peers. This could be evidence of juvenile gulls learning this behaviour through trial and error. The low height at which the clams are dropped may also result in the number of times the younger gulls had to drop their prey. Immature western gulls tend to drop their prey more frequently than the older gulls do, most likely due to inconsistency in drop height as well as the height of the drops. Unlike most birds who drop their prey, western gulls actually seem to prefer softer substrates over larger substrates when dropping their prey, and only seem to drop their prey on hard surfaces if their prey is heavier.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In observations made in Central Europe, a two-year-old black-headed gull was seen taking a small swan mussel about 60 feet up into the air to drop on an asphalt road. It is unknown how successful the gull was seeing as a nearby crow stole the mussel. This was the first time prey-dropping was recorded in this species of gulls. It is likely that this behaviour is not common in this species of gull, as there is no other evidence of black-headed gulls dropping prey. It is more likely that this observation was due to the fact that there was a large group of hood crows during this study, and it may be that the gull observed was mimicking the prey-dropping behaviour of the hood crows nearby. This may be evident seeing as after the gull had dropped the mussel, it made no move to try and grab it for another drop. However, due to the fact that it was not only a single black-headed gull that was observed, but also a young bird, it is possible that successful prey-dropping may occur in other members of this species.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In 2009, two sooty gulls near Hamata, Egypt, were seen using prey-dropping behaviour on a strip of coral reef. Unlike other gulls, the gulls only flew up about 6 m and broke molluscs in one drop. All drops were successful.


title: Tool use by animals

text: The green heron ("Butorides virescens") and its sister species the striated heron ("Butorides striata") have been recorded using food (bread crusts), insects, leaves, and other small objects as bait to attract fish, which they then capture and eat.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Tool use by American alligators and mugger crocodiles has been documented. During the breeding season, birds such as herons and egrets look for sticks to build their nests. Alligators and crocodiles collect sticks to use as bait to catch birds. The crocodilian positions itself near a rookery, partially submerges with the sticks balanced on its head, and when a bird approaches to take the stick, it springs its trap. This stick displaying strategy is the first known case of a predator not only using an object as a lure, but also taking into account the seasonal behaviour of its prey.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Several species of wrasses have been observed using rocks as anvils to crack bivalve (scallops, urchins and clams) shells. It was first filmed in an orange-dotted tuskfish ("Choerodon anchorago") in 2009 by Giacomo Bernardi. The fish fans sand to unearth the bivalve, takes it into its mouth, swims several metres to a rock which it uses as an anvil by smashing the mollusc apart with sideward thrashes of the head. This behaviour has been recorded in a blackspot tuskfish ("Choerodon schoenleinii") on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, yellowhead wrasse ("Halichoeres garnoti") in Florida and a six-bar wrasse ("Thalassoma hardwicke") in an aquarium setting. These species are at opposite ends of the phylogenetic tree in this family, so this behaviour may be a deep-seated trait in all wrasses.


title: Tool use by animals

text: It has been reported that freshwater stingrays use water as a tool by manipulating their bodies to direct a flow of water and extract food trapped amongst plants.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Prior to laying their eggs on a vertical rock face, male and female whitetail major damselfish clean the site by sand-blasting it. The fish pick up sand in their mouths and spit it against the rock face. Then they fan the area with their fins. Finally they remove the sand grains that remain stuck to the rock face by picking them off with their mouths.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Banded acara ("Bujurquina vittata"), South American cichlids, lay their eggs on a loose leaf. The male and female of a mating pair often "test" leaves before spawning: they pull and lift and turn candidate leaves, possibly trying to select leaves that are easy to move. After spawning, both parents guard the eggs. When disturbed, the parent acara often seize one end of the egg-carrying leaf in their mouth and drag it to deeper and safer locations.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Archerfish are found in the tropical mangrove swamps of India and Australasia. They approach the surface, take aim at insects that sit on plants above the surface, squirt a jet of water at them, and grab them after the insects have been knocked off into the water. The jet of water is formed by the action of the tongue, which presses against a groove in the roof of the mouth. Some archerfish can hit insects up to 1.5 m above the water surface. They use


title: Tool use by animals

text: more water, which gives more force to the impact, when aiming at larger prey. Some triggerfish (e.g. "Pseudobalistes fuscus") blow water to turn sea urchins over and expose their more vulnerable ventral side. Whether these later examples can be classified as tool use depends on which definition is being followed because there is no intermediate or manipulated object, however, they are examples of highly specialised natural adaptations.


title: Tool use by animals

text: At least four veined octopus ("Amphioctopus marginatus") individuals were witnessed retrieving coconut shells, manipulating them, stacking them, transporting them some distance (up to 20 metres), and then reassembling them to use as a shelter. The octopuses use coconut shells discarded by humans which have eventually settled in the ocean. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then rotate the shells out. After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell—or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other. They then stiffen their legs and move away in a manner which has been called "stilt-walking". The octopuses eventually use the shells as a protective shelter in areas where little other shelter exists. If they just have one half, they simply turn it over and hide underneath. But if they are lucky enough to have retrieved two halves, they assemble them back into the original closed coconut form and sneak inside. This behaviour has been filmed. The authors of the research article claimed this behaviour falls under the definition of tool use because the shells are carried for later use. However, this argument remains contested by a number of other biologists who state that the shells actually provide continuous protection from abundant bottom-dwelling predators in their home range.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Octopuses deliberately place stones, shells and even bits of broken bottle to form a wall that constricts the aperture to the den, a type of tool use.


title: Tool use by animals

text: In laboratory studies, "Octopus mercatoris", a small pygmy species of octopus, has been observed to block its lair using a plastic Lego brick.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Smaller individuals of the common blanket octopus ("Tremoctopus violaceus") hold the tentacles of the Portuguese man o' war, to whose poison they are immune, both as protection and as a method of capturing prey.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Ants of the species "Conomyrma bicolor" pick up stones and other small objects with their mandibles and drop them down the vertical entrances of rival colonies, allowing workers to forage for food without competition.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Several species of ant are known to use substrate debris such as mud and leaves to transport water to their nest. A study in 2017 reported that when two species of "Aphaenogaster" ant are offered natural and artificial objects as tools for this activity, they choose items with a good soaking capacity. The ants develop a preference for artificial tools that cannot be found in their natural environment, indicating plasticity in their tool-use behaviour.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Hunting wasps of the genus "Prionyx" use weights (such as compacted sediment or a small pebble) to settle sand surrounding a recently provisioned burrow containing eggs and live prey in order to camouflage and seal the entrance. The wasp vibrates its wing muscles with an audible buzz while holding the weight in its mandibles, and applies the weight to the sand surrounding its burrow, causing the sand to vibrate and settle. Another hunting wasp, "Ammophila", uses pebbles to close burrow entrances.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Some species of crickets construct acoustic baffles from the leaves of plants to amplify sounds they make for communication during mating. It was in 1975 that scientists first observed and two other species of South African chirping crickets doing this.


title: Tool use by animals

text: Insects can also learn to use tools. A study in 2017 showed that bumblebees of the species "Bombus terrestris" learned to move a small wooden ball to the goal in order to get sucrose reward.


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: Brandon Micheal Hall (born February 3, 1993) is an American actor. On television, he starred as the lead of the ABC sitcom "The Mayor" (2017) and the CBS comedy-drama "God Friended Me" (2018–2020). Hall also appeared as a series regular on the TBS / HBO Max dark comedy "Search Party" (2016–2022).


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: Hall was born on February 3, 1993, in Anderson, South Carolina, and raised by his single mother, a minister. He attended Pendleton High School for his freshman and sophomore years, before transferring to South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities in Greenville. Hall went on to study drama at the Juilliard School in New York City, from which he graduated in 2015.


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: Hall was in "Cecile on the Phone" (2017). He was in "Monster Party" (2018) and "Lez Bomb" (2018). Hall was in the romantic comedy film "Always a Bridesmaid" (2019) as Kenny directed by Trey Haley and written by Yvette Nicole Brown, her first screenplay.


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: Hall was cast in the 2015 pilot for "LFE", directed by David Slade, but the pilot did not receive a series order. A year later, Hall landed his first series regular role on the TBS dark comedy "Search Party" as Julius Marcus, a journalist and former boyfriend of series lead Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat). He appeared in the main cast for the first two seasons and was a guest star in the third and fourth seasons. Hall was subsequently cast in the title role of the ABC sitcom "The Mayor" in 2017, portraying an aspiring rapper who inadvertently becomes mayor of his hometown. The series received positive reviews, but was cancelled after one season.


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: In 2018, Hall was cast in the lead role of on the CBS comedy-drama "God Friended Me". Hall portrayed Miles Finer, an outspoken atheist who helps people needing assistance after receiving a Facebook friend request from an individual identifying as God. It aired for two seasons before being cancelled in 2020.


title: Brandon Micheal Hall

text: Hall donates his time at least one Sunday a month with the group Hashtag Lunchbag Brooklyn, to make sandwiches for those less fortunate in Brooklyn.


title: No Offence

text: No Offence is a British television police procedural drama on Channel 4, created by Paul Abbott. It follows a team of detectives from Friday Street police station, a division of the Manchester Metropolitan Police (a fictional version of the Greater Manchester Police). The series stars Joanna Scanlan as the protagonist, Detective Inspector Viv Deering. The first series focuses on the team's investigation into the serial murders of young girls with Down syndrome. It was renewed for two further runs. The second series of seven episodes began broadcasting on 4 January 2017, and follows the investigation into Manchester crime boss Nora Attah (Rakie Ayola). It was filmed on location in Manchester.


title: No Offence

text: In the UK, the first episode of "No Offence" launched with 2.5 million viewers, Channel 4's biggest midweek drama launch for more than three years. Although subsequent episodes lost overnight viewers, dropping as low as 1.2 million, the weekly consolidated series average remained at 2.5 million and finished 47% up on Channel 4's slot average. In France, the first episode of "No Offence" aired on 29 February 2016 on France 2 and was watched by 5.46 million viewers, 20.4% of the TV audience. The next three episodes were shown back-to-back that evening and together achieved an average 4.6 million viewers, 19.3% of the TV audience.


title: No Offence

text: A third series was confirmed in July 2017. Filming took place in Manchester in March 2018 and it began broadcasting on 13 September 2018. The six-episode series has a political focus, with the main storyline following the attempted murder of a local politician by a far right group. On 19 October 2018, Paul Abbott stated in an interview that he had begun working on ideas for a potential fourth series, but on 28 November 2019, Executive Producer Martin Carr confirmed on Twitter that the show would not be returning.


title: No Offence

text: In the first series, DI Viv Deering is introduced as the dynamic but blunt leader of a team of detectives at a fictional police station within the 'Manchester Metropolitan Police'. DC Dinah Kowalska misses out on promotion to DS after leaving the scene after an impetuous foot chase results in a death. She then uncovers a link between a murder, a drowning and a disappearance: someone is killing girls with Down syndrome. While negotiating different cases, the team must solve the case as more girls come into danger. The prime suspect is killed whilst fleeing arrest, but Dinah and Viv separately conclude that Viv's husband is also involved. Viv burns the evidence and plans to kill rather than arrest him, but he is killed by Cathy while she and Dinah are holding him at Viv's home. With Viv they cover up their involvement before the body is found.


title: No Offence

text: The second series begins a little over a year later, as Viv returns after extended leave and attends a gang funeral, which is bombed despite the police presence.


title: No Offence

text: The complete Series One and Two were released on 10 August 2015, as well as a boxset containing both series. The complete Series Three was released on 22 October 2018, along with a complete collection containing all three series.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: General elections were held in Kenya on 8 August 2017 to elect the President, members of the National Assembly and Senate. They coincided with the 2017 Kenyan local elections which elected Governors and representatives in the devolved governments.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The published results showed that incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Party had been re-elected with 54% of the vote. However, his main opponent, Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, refused to accept the results and contested them in the Supreme Court. The results of the presidential election were subsequently annulled by the court and fresh presidential elections was ordered to be held within 60 days. It was later announced that the elections would be held in October.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The results of the parliamentary and local elections remained valid. The Jubilee Party retained its majority in the Senate, winning 34 of the 67 seats, and remained the largest party in the National Assembly with 171 of the 341 seats. The Orange Democratic Movement won 20 seats in the Senate and 76 in the National Assembly.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The Kenyan Constitution requires a general election on the second Tuesday in August in every fifth year. There have been public discussions to move the date from August to December with proponents pointing to the fiscal timeline (1 July – 30 June) clashing with an August date, because most ministries that support critical election processes will not have been fully funded and that a possible presidential runoff vote may interfere with the national examinations calendar of October and December.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: Opponents of the proposed date change have argued for protecting the constitutional provision and that any change would be mired by legal challenges and might drag on to the next elections and still require a referendum to decide, putting the country's stability at risk.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: On 7 August 2017, one day before the election, Barack Obama, who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and whose father, Barack Obama Sr., was Kenyan, called for calm and acceptance of the election results.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The President of Kenya is elected using a modified version of the two-round system: to win in the first round, a candidate must receive over 50% of the vote and at least 25% of the vote in a minimum of 24 of the 47 counties.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The 337 members of the National Assembly are elected by two methods; 290 are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The remaining 47 are reserved for women and are elected from single-member constituencies based on the 47 counties, also using the first-past-the-post system. The 67 members of the Senate are elected by four methods; 47 are elected in single-member constituencies based on the counties by first-past-the-post voting. Parties are then assigned a share of 16 seats for women, two for youth and two for disabled people based on their seat share.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission set the duration for political parties to conduct their primaries in April 2017 following the review of Kenya's Election Laws. Parties would have 14 days between 20 April and 2 May to conduct their primaries and submit their candidates to the electoral commission.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: On 29 July 2017, Deputy President Dr. William Ruto's house was attacked by a local man armed with a machete. During the siege, the deputy president and his family were not present. The assailant first injured the guard on duty, held him hostage and then killed him. The siege lasted 18 hours before special forces of the Kenyan Police shot the attacker dead. The motives of the attacker were unknown and members of the public were unaware how a man armed with a machete held the elite police forces at bay for 18 hours.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: On 27 July 2017, two bodies were found on the outskirts of Nairobi. One of the dead, Christopher Msando, was the head of information, communication, and technology at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. He played a major role in developing the new voting system for the election. His body showed apparent marks of torture before he was murdered for unclear reasons. Alongside it was the body of a 21-year-old woman, Maryanne Ngumbu. The FBI and Scotland Yard offered to help in the investigation.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The murder of Msando raised suspicion among the opposition that it was part of a plot by the ruling party to rig the election, as it appeared Msando was standing in the way.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: Andrew Kipkoech Rono, 58, who was arrested over allegations he sent a threatening message to Msando before he was killed, appeared before High Court judge, James Wakiaga.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: Kenyatta had maintained 10+% lead over Odinga in most polls for many weeks, but the two most recent polls before the election suggested a much closer race. The outcome was reported as a 9.5% victory for Kenyatta. On 10 August, provisional results released by the Kenyan electoral commission put Kenyatta ahead by 54.2% to Odinga's 44.92%. The head of the EU delegation Marietje Schaake said there had been no sign of manipulation of the result at central or local level and urged all sides to accept the result.


title: 2017 Kenyan general election

text: The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) declared incumbents Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto as president-elect and deputy president-elect respectively on the evening of 11 August 2017. The National Super Alliance disputed the results.