Object manipulation without hands: kinematics and evolution of nest building by birds

手工艺是人类行为的标志。数百万年来，双手使人类能够开发出重要的创新，包括工具，即使在极端环境中也能找到庇护所，以及可以将我们带到地球上任何地方和太空的车辆。灵长类动物的手由五个手指和一个手掌组成，有详细的关节和肌肉结构，使灵活的操纵动作成为可能。然而，令人惊讶的是，有一些由动物建造的结构与人类的编织物惊人地相似，例如鱼钩，编织结和陶器，但这些都不是手工建造的。这种结构的建造者是鸟类：如乌鸦加工一个分叉的分支，使一个钩状工具，用于提取食物，织巢鸟从草带打结，使一个巢，或燕子和炉鸟使用泥，使锅状巢。这些鸟是如何在没有手的情况下，仅仅用它们的喙就做出这样类似人类的结构的呢？解决这个基本问题不仅可以为这种非凡的手工艺能力的进化起源提供重要的科学见解，而且还可以为工业机器人和受损或缺失的医疗假肢的设计提供灵感和见解。为了研究鸟类如何不用手来建造结构，我将使用先进的跟踪，实验室和现场实验，沿着比较分析来研究鸟类筑巢行为的细节。筑巢是一个很好的对象操作模型：大多数鸟类筑巢;鸟巢可以由各种材料制成，包括植物，动物和人造物体。我的方法包括两种互补的方法：行为实验，以建立详细的议案，而他们处理鸟巢材料的鸟类，和一个大规模的计算模型，以调查如果法案形状和鸟巢材料一起演变。为了研究各种动物的体型和筑巢材料特征之间的相互作用，我将使用三种鸟类：白眉雀织雀、斑胸草雀和家燕，因为这些物种有不同的喙形状，使用不同类型的筑巢材料。为了确定鸟类在筑巢过程中如何移动喙，我将通过与我的主持人Susan Healy教授和合作者埃克塞特大学的Andy Young博士以及SOKENDAI的Masaru Hasegawa博士的国际合作伙伴关系，在英国，南非和日本进行行为实验。为了从行为实验的视频片段中获取和分析鸟类运动的信息，我将开发自动跟踪软件，并与爱丁堡大学的Barbara Webb教授合作，使用机器学习分析数据。从实验和分析中，我将能够告诉鸟类使用什么技术来处理不同的巢穴材料，以及当材料改变其物理特性时，这些技术如何变化。在该项目的后半部分，我将在合作者达勒姆大学Sally Street博士和Kevin教授的监督下构建一个全球模型，以检查各种鸟类的喙形状是否随着巢穴材料而进化。拉兰德和圣安德鲁斯大学的凯瑟琳·谢尔德博士。使用这两种方法（行为实验和进化建模），从精细到全球规模，我将确定票据对象操作的优点和局限性，最终提供对人类双手真正独特特征的见解。

Crafting is a hallmark of human behaviour. For millions of years, hands have enabled humans to develop important innovations, including tools, shelter even in the extreme environments, and vehicles that can carry us anywhere on Earth and into space. Primate hands consist of five digits and a palm with detailed joints and muscle structure, which enable flexible manipulative actions. Amazingly, however, there are structures built by animals that are uncannily similar to human craftwork, such as fishhooks, woven knots and pottery, but that are built without hands. The builders of such structures are birds: such as crows processing a forked branch to make a hooked tool for extracting food, weaverbirds making knots from grass strips to make a nest, or swallows and ovenbirds using mud to make pot-like nests. How do these birds make such human-like structures without hands, simply using their bills? Answering this basic question would provide not only the important scientific insights into the evolutionary origin of this remarkable crafting ability, but could also provide inspirations and insights for the design of industrial robots and medical prosthetics for damaged or missing hands. To examine how birds build structures hands-free, I will use advanced tracking, lab and field experiments, along with comparative analyses to study the details of nest-building behaviour in birds. Nest building is an excellent model for object manipulation: most bird species build nests; and nests can be made from a wide range of materials including plants, animals and artificial objects. My methods consist of two complementary approaches: behavioural experiments to establish detailed motions used by birds while they handle nest material, and a large-scale computational model to investigate if bill shape and nest materials evolved together. To investigate interactions between a broad range of animals' body shape and nest material characteristics, I will use three bird species: white-browed sparrow weavers, zebra finches and barn swallows, as these species have different bill shapes and use different types of nest material. To determine how birds move their bills during nest building, I will carry out behavioural experiments in the UK, South Africa and Japan through my international partnerships with my host PI Prof Susan Healy and Collaborators Dr Andy Young at Univ Exeter, and Dr Masaru Hasegawa at SOKENDAI. To acquire and analyse the information on bird movements from video footage of the behavioural experiment, I will develop automatic tracking software, and analyse the data using machine learning, in collaboration with Prof Barbara Webb at Univ of Edinburgh. From the experiments and analysis, I will be able to tell what techniques birds use to handle different nest materials, and how the techniques change when a material changes its physical properties. In the latter part of the project, I will construct a global model to examine if bill shape evolved with nest material in a wide range of bird species, under the supervision of Collaborator Dr Sally Street at Durham University and Prof Kevin Laland and Dr Catherine Sheard at Univ of St Andrews. Using these two methods (behavioural experiments and evolutionary modelling) ranging from fine- to global-scale, I will identify the advantages and limitations of object manipulations by bills, ultimately providing insights into the truly unique characteristics of human hands.