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Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app.

This is scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagata.

We humans used to think that our ability to use tools

made us different from all other animals.

But then we found out chimps use tools too, such as twigs, to gather termite snacks, and rocks

to hammer open nuts. And some birds use tools, like brainy new caledonian crows, which can assemble

multi-part tools to solve puzzle boxes presented to them by researchers. Well now we've learned that a different group of birds, sea birds, can also use tools.

Scientists spied on Atlantic puffins, the distinctive tuxedoed birds with bright orange beaks,

and in 2014 the observer spotted one floating on the sea off whales,

scratching its back with a stick.

Then in 2018, the researchers caught another tool

using puffin on camera, on Iceland's Grimsy Island.

In a short video clip a puffin can be seen grabbing a stick with its beak

and then using it to scratch its chest, perhaps to dislodge one of the seabird ticks infesting the island that summer.

The details about puff and proficiency are in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study author Annette Fayette told Scientific American in an email that these two instances

don't prove that seabirds are highly intelligent, though they could be smarter than

we thought, but what is certain, she says, is that puffin populations are crashing,

and it's largely the fault of us and our tools, which have led to overfishing, climate change,

...