Fish Join the List of Tool-Using Animals (Probably)

In Australia's Great Barrier Reef

, a professional diver has photographed a blackspot turkfish

smashing a clam against a rock to get the tasty treat on the inside—this appears to be the first documented case of a fish using a tool

. But some people argue that this behavior, which is similar to a seagull cracking open a shell by dropping it onto a hard surface, does not constitute tool use because the "tool" is fixed and the animal never actually holds it. See a nice round-up video of the news and the tool-use debate at HuffPost

. Image: Scott Gardner/Coral Reefs

, DOI:10.1007/s00338-011-0790-y