Friday Fun: Bird Using Bait to Fish

Posted on May 15, 2009  Comments (9)

In the webcast an Aukuu bird (Black-crowned Night Heron) fishes using bread as bait. They normally hunt by waiting at the side of a lake and fishing. This individual learned how to bait the fish with bread and improve the fishing results. It also passed on that method to other birds that learned how to use the bait method themselves.

Another bird using bait (with turtles trying to get the bait) and another bird using bait (with a stork trying to steal the fish). And another one. The videos seem to be different species of birds to me.

Related: Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with SpearDolphins Using Tools to HuntBird Brain experimentposts on animals

9 Responses to “Friday Fun: Bird Using Bait to Fish”

  1. Anonymous
    May 15th, 2009 @ 12:10 pm

    I saw something similar where birds were actually throwing nuts in the road and letting cars ran over them to crack them, and they then would pick up the pieces after watching the street light turned red. Genius!

  2. Anonymous
    May 20th, 2009 @ 2:55 pm

    The only thing I’ve seen that was close is seagulls dropping clams onto a road frmo high altitudes to break them open.

  3. Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Pigeon Solves Box and Banana Problem
    July 5th, 2009 @ 8:31 am

    Laboratory footage showing a pigeon solving Wolfgang Kohler’s famous box-and-banana problem, which he studied with chimpanzees in the early 1900s..

  4. Curious Cat Science Blog » Friday Fun: Dancing Parrot
    October 9th, 2009 @ 9:41 am

    […] Bird dancing to the music […]

  5. Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Friday Fun: Bird Mimics Other Birds and More
    November 27th, 2009 @ 1:02 pm

    “The lyre bird, not only mimics the calls of other birds, buy also man made noises such as cameras, saws and chainsaws, in an attempt to impress potential mates…”

  6. Photo of Fish Using a Rock to Open a Clam » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    July 11th, 2011 @ 8:47 am

    Tool use, once thought to be the distinctive hallmark of human intelligence, has been identified in a wide variety of animals in recent decades…

  7. Friday Fun: Crow Sledding, Flying Back Up and Sledding Down Again » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    January 20th, 2012 @ 7:01 am

    […] Great video of a crow sledding down a roof on a small inner tube like thing (a lid?). Then it picks up the sled and flies back to the top and sleds down again. […]

  8. Bird Using Bread as Bait to Catch Fish » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    September 3rd, 2012 @ 10:48 am

    […] strategy to take a byproduct of people (bread) and use it to lure in your prey. I posted another bird fishing using bait webcast previously: that post includes links to more such […]

  9. Insightful Problem Solving in an Asian Elephant » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    April 12th, 2017 @ 9:45 am

    […] This Asian Elephant, seemed to consider the problem, devise a solution and then go get a stool to reach food that could not be reached without a tool. […]

Leave a Reply