Great-tailed grackle stick tool use data, Santa Barbara, CA USA 2014-2015

Behavioural flexibility is considered a key factor in the ability to adapt to changing environments. A traditional way of characterising behavioural flexibility is to determine whether individuals invent solutions to novel problems, termed innovativeness. Great-tailed grackles are behaviourally flexible in that they can change their preferences when a task changes using existing behaviours, however it is unknown how far they will go to invent solutions to novel problems. To begin to answer this question, I gave grackles two novel tests that a variety of other species can perform: stick tool use and string pulling. No grackle used a stick to access out of reach food, even after seeing a human demonstrate the solution. No grackle spontaneously pulled a vertically oriented string, but one did pull a horizontally oriented string twice. Additionally, a third novel test was previously conducted on these individuals and found that no grackle spontaneously dropped stones down a platform apparatus to release food, but 6/8 did become proficient after training. These results support the idea that behavioural flexibility is a multi-faceted trait because grackles are flexible, but not particularly innovative. This contradicts the idea that behavioural flexibility and innovativeness are interchangeable terms.