Dec 16, 2015 12:09 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

A team of researchers detailed how a population of captive greater vasa parrots used tools to make calcium powder using their own method.

Published in the journal Biology Letters, the new study is based on observations of 10 greater vasa parrots.

"Without witnessing the first tool using event, it's difficult to know how this behavior started, but the social system of these birds, and the fact that they share tools, would certainly support a scenario where tool use was transmitted socially after observing one innovative individual," study lead author Megan Lambert, of the University of York's Department of Psychology, told Discovery News.

Originally from Madagascar, the parrots the researchers used in the study were living in an aviary at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the U.K.

"[We] noticed they were interacting quite a bit with objects from the floor of their aviary," Lambert told Live Science. "So we took a closer look and that's when we found they were actually using tools."

The calcium production indicated the birds not only knew how to use tools, but were devising their own way to use them based on the blueprint from one of their own.

"Unlike mammals, birds cannot efficiently store calcium in the skeleton and so may still require an extra boost during the breeding season to assist with the formation of their eggshells, which are made almost entirely of calcium," Lambert said in a statement. "This is one possible explanation for why these birds were so interested in the shells just before the breeding season, but ultimately more research needs to be done to determine whether this regularly occurs before the breeding season in these birds."

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