# Do any other animals cook or in some way prepare food? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 11, 2006, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564 "2006-01-11T21:53:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/21 "2006-01-12T16:07:56Z")
My ringneck parrots dunk their food in water before they eat it. I think they do this because of poor saliva flow. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/22 "2014-08-16T17:04:01Z")
According to Cracked, at least one [Great Ape has learnt how to cook from watching a a documentary.](http://www.cracked.com/article_21327_5-animals-who-taught-themselves-eerily-human-skills_p2.html) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2014, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/23 "2014-08-16T20:18:29Z")
I’m sure I’ve read of some sort of insect that actually makes bread: They grind up grains, mix them with liquids, and let it harden in the sun. Googling is just giving me a bunch of human-made bread with insects in it, though. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2014, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/24 "2014-08-16T23:56:02Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > I’ve also heard that if you give a racoon a sugarcube that they’ll wash and wash it until it dissolves entirely. That might be an urban legend though. Doesn’t say much for the intelligence of racoons. I have heard that raccoons wash their food and I could swear that I have seen it on wildlife videos. In any case, raccoons certainly aren’t dumb. They are among the smartest of North American wildlife and great problem solvers. They can figure out how to open just about anything and their front paws have as much dexterity as most types of monkeys. They generally don’t need to prepare their food where they are most often encountered - campgrounds and suburban areas. It is already prepared for them. However, they definitely pick through trash cans or wherever else they find food and carefully select the food that they like while leaving the rest. I have been terrorized by more raccoons than I can count over the years and they will go to great lengths to get food that they want. Even metal trash cans secured with locked chains aren’t always enough to keep them out. They are the Houdinis of the animal world. Some animals may not prepare their own food but they have learned to appreciate the good life like [these alcoholic monkeys (really) on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSmzZ1tB8I). They may or may not know how to mix a good drink themselves but they certainly know how to get them. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/25 "2014-08-17T00:28:51Z")
Crows would use our truck wash to soak old chicken bones they gathered from the amusement park next to our shop. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/26 "2014-08-17T00:51:20Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > According to Cracked, at least one [Great Ape has learnt how to cook from watching a a documentary.](http://www.cracked.com/article_21327_5-animals-who-taught-themselves-eerily-human-skills_p2.html) :dubious: [Quest For Fire](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/?mode=desktop&ref_=m_ft_dsk) was a very interesting movie, but it was _not_ a documentary. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/27 "2014-08-17T04:58:51Z")
[Sea otters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_otter) use rocks to open up clams and such that they eat. Not much food prep, and certainly not cooking, but at least curious. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/28 "2014-08-17T05:38:29Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > I’ve also heard that if you give a racoon a sugarcube that they’ll wash and wash it until it dissolves entirely. That might be an urban legend though. Doesn’t say much for the intelligence of racoons. See Breland & Breland, [The Misbehavior of Organisms](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Breland/misbehavior.htm) , 1961 (first published in _American Psychologist, 16,_ 681-684). They taught a raccoon to pick up coins, put them into a container, to be redeemed later for food. The raccoon quickly got into the habit of rubbing the coins together. Breland & Breland believed that the raccoon had transferred its washing behavior from the food to the coins that had become tokens for food. > [@Breland & Breland](#): > > The response concerned the manipulation of money by the raccoon (who has “hands” rather similar to those of the primates). The contingency for reinforcement was picking up the coins and depositing them in a 5-inch metal box. > > Raccoons condition readily, have good appetites, and this one was quite tame and an eager subject. We anticipated no trouble. Conditioning him to pick up the first coin was simple. We started out by reinforcing him for picking up a single coin. Then the metal container was introduced, with the requirement that he drop the coin into the container. Here we ran into the first bit of difficulty: he seemed to have a great deal of trouble letting go of the coin. He would rub it up against the inside of the container, pull it back out, and clutch it firmly for several seconds. However, he would finally turn it loose and receive his food reinforcement. Then the final contingency: we put him on a ratio of 2, requiring that he pick up both coins and put them in the container. > > Now the raccoon really had problems (and so did we). Not only could he not let go of the coins, but he spent seconds, even minutes, rubbing them together (in a most miserly fashion), and dipping them into the container. He carried on this behavior to such an extent that the practical application we had in mind - a display featuring a raccoon putting money in a piggy bank - simply was not feasible. The rubbing behavior became worse and worse as time went on, in spite of nonreinforcement. > > \< . . . \> > > The raccoon is demonstrating so-called “washing behavior.” The rubbing and washing response may result, for example, in the removal of the exoskeleton of a crayfish. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/29 "2014-08-17T07:39:02Z")
There’s whatever bees do to nectar to turn it into honey. Also, I read somewhere on the internet, so you know it’s true, that elephants will stomp on fruit to mash it up, then come back a week or two later to eat the fermented results, get drunk, then rampage through a village. Good times. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-other-animals-cook-or-in-some-way-prepare-food/339564/30 "2014-08-17T11:16:36Z")
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