Cookies policy

Daily news

22 December 2011

Dingo rearranges furniture for better dining

Video: Dingo moves table to snag treat

A captive dingo has been caught on camera moving a table to use it as a step stool to reach a tasty morsel. It is a rare example of an animal solving a complex problem, though strictly speaking it is not true tool use.

Bradley Smith of the Australian Dingo Foundation and colleagues observed dingoes at the Dingo Discovery and Research Centre in Toolern Vale, Victoria.

In 2008 a male dingo called Sterling was trying to reach a food item dangling from the ceiling of his enclosure. It was too high to jump, so he dragged a table across the enclosure and then stood on it, allowing him to reach the food (see video, above). Smith has just described Sterling’s drag act in the scientific literature.

On another occasion he moved a plastic kennel to a different place in the enclosure and then sat on top of it. Sitting on the kennel gave him a better view of neighbouring cages.


“At some point, he has made the connection between the position of the table and the object of desire or goal, such that he uses the table as a means to an end,” Smith says. “In this way, the table is a tool.”

However impressive it may be, Sterling’s behaviour isn’t really tool use, says Christian Rutz of the University of Oxford. The most widely accepted definition, set out in 1980 by comparative psychologist Benjamin Beck, requires the animal to be holding the tool when it carries out the task. Moving a table and then standing on it doesn’t count.

Journal reference: Behavioural Processes, DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2011.11.004