Without Technology, You’d be Dead in Days
Humans are far from the only species that uses technology. In 1871, Charles Darwin wrote,
“It has often been said that no animal uses any tool.”
Then he merrily provided a long list of evidence to the contrary.
One of Darwin’s examples was the Asian elephant, which repels flies by waving a branch in its trunk. The elephant does not wave any branch it finds. It modifies the branch by removing side branches or shortening the stem. Sometimes it strips bark from a vine and use that instead.
This is the essential difference between tools and, say, rabbit warrens or spiders webs. Elephants make their tools by manipulating (or handling) things they seek out specifically. They do not only use things they happen to find, or only dig holes, or only restrict themselves to bodily secretions.
Branch breaking by elephants is simple compared to the technology used by birds. Birds don’t just break branches, they take twigs, grass and other materials and fashion them into homes. These homes can be very sophisticated. There is a species of thorn bird that builds nests up to two meters long and nearly half a meter wide, with four or more separate chambers—a nest condominium so strong that it can survive a fall of many meters with its eggs intact, that is lined with thorns to deter predators (hence the name, “thorn birds”) and that has well concealed viewing holes so the birds inside can see danger approaching.
The technology used by beavers is perhaps the greatest non-human technology of all. Beavers build homes called “lodges,” shape their environment by creating dams and, less well known, construct canals to help with the transport of food and building materials.
There are many other examples of animal technology. The more we look, the more we find
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