LONDON -- A crow called Betty has shown that even bird- brains can be as creative as humans. Betty has astonished scientists by deliberately bending a straight wire into a hook and using it to extract food from a container, DPA reported.

Oxford University researchers watched her successfully repeat the feat nine times in a laboratory, using more than one technique. It is said to be the first time any animal other than a human has shown a clear understanding of cause and effect, and fashioned a tool for a specific task using new materials not encountered in the wild.

Not even chimpanzees, our closest cousins, have this ability.

Although chimps use sticks as crude tools, in experiments they have not shown any human-like understanding of deliberate tool-making or basic physical laws.

Betty is one of two captive new Caledonian crows being studied by Oxford University's behavioral ecology research group. In their native home, the south Pacific island of New Caledonia, crows of her species are known to make tools out of twigs and leaves to winkle out grubs. But Betty took crow tool-making to a new level by having the initiative to bend a piece of wire and use it to scoop out food from a vertical plastic tube in a tray.

Scientists first spotted her ability by accident after an experiment to see whether the birds would select a hooked wire rather than a straight wire to use as a tool.

Betty's lab-mate, an older male crow called Abel, snatched away the hook, leaving her with only the straight wire and no way of retrieving the food.

Professor Alex Kacelnik, who heads the research group, said: "The male of the pair took the hook away and the female was left with a straight wire. First she tried to get the food with the straight wire, and couldn't reach it. So she pushed the tip of the wire in a crack in the tray and bent it to form a hook. She then used this to get the food. We were somewhat surprised to verify that what we'd observed was not a fluke, we tested the same animal again but only gave her a straight wire.

"Nine times out of 10 she solved the problem to perfection. What is more, she didn't do it the same way each time.

Sometimes she stood on the wire with one foot while pulling the tip with her beak.

Or she stuck the wire into a crevice and worked on it, coming from different angles. If it didn't work right at first, and she couldn't get the food, she'd take it out and fix it so that it did. "This was an individual animal facing a new task with new materials in front of her, and solving the problem by creating a new solution. It is very striking. Chimps and other birds do use tools, but there has never been a report of an animal systematically fashioning a tool for a new task out of unnatural materials for the first time."

The results of the experiment were reported in the journal ***Science.**** Professor Kacelnik said the team planned to see whether other new Caledonian crows captured from the wild had similar abilities, and whether they might be shared by other birds. Abel, whose preferred strategy was to steal Betty's food after she had hooked it out, has not been tested the same way.

He is not considered a good subject due to his age and because he has been in captivity for a long time.

Professor Kacelnik said just because Betty was a gifted tool- maker, it did not mean she was necessarily bright in other areas. "What we believe is that there isn't a single kind of intelligence," he said. "Different species have developed different kinds of intelligence appropriate to their particular needs. We do not believe, although we do not know, that these animals will be bright at any other tasks, but they are excellent with tools."

There have been many cases of birds showing surprising levels of intelligence. Crows and ravens are both good at solving problems, and experiments have shown that pigeons can identify humans and recognize letters of alphabet. The most famous intelligent bird is alex, an African grey parrot studied by Dr. Irene Pepperberg in the United States in the 1980s. He was able to use more than 100 English words correctly to refer to objects, ask questions, and make requests. After learning to use the numbers one to six, he described a triangle as "three-cornered" and a square as "four-cornered".