The use of tools—tooling—by diverse animals has attracted much attention over the years. We now know that a wide variety of animals use tools, with some clever surprises among them.1 Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.

Marc Bekoff: Why has tool behavior, or tooling, become a hot area of inquiry?

Benjamin Beck: Tool use has been scientifically hot since at least 1844, when Thomas Savage, a missionary, saw wild chimpanzees in Gabon pounding open palm nuts with stones “precisely in the manner of human beings.” Wolfgang Köhler documented a wide variety of spontaneous tool use by formerly wild chimpanzees in the 1920s. Tool use then became a hot topic for academics, but received little attention in newspapers and popular magazines. Jane Goodall’s inventory of complex forms of tool use by wild chimpanzees shifted scientific paradigms, but also wowed the public in the early 1960s. We can all still remember those smashing color photos and videos in National Geographic magazine and on the relatively new medium of television. Planet of the Apes grabbed the ape tool spotlight in 1968. Now, every new scientific article on........

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