‘It’s a big puzzle,’ said Russell D. Gray, head of the Auckland lab. 'Why [the New Caledonian crow]? Why is this species on a small island in the Pacific able to not just use but to manufacture a variety of tools, and in a flexible rather than a rote or programmatic way? Why are they able to do at least as well as chimpanzees on experiments of cognition that show an understanding of the physical properties of the world and an ability to generalize from one problem to the next?’