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Tool Use principle

Lessons from Sea Otter

Bring the rock.

Rock-Cracked Shell Feeding

Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) featured animal image on AnimalDex

Core lesson

A hard thing opens when intelligence brings the right object to the task.

Biological basis

Sea Otters use stones as tools to crack open shellfish while floating on their backs, and they use dexterous paws to handle prey and tools.

Best use cases

Where this lesson tends to be most useful in practice.

Tool useProblem-solvingPractical intelligenceHard tasksCreative methods

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