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There are very few animals that are known to use tools from their own discovery, rather than mimicking humans. Chimpanzees are probably the best known example.
I’m not sure if that crow learned from watching humans, but even so it’s an extraordinary feat for a bird, even one as smart as a crow.
jj72-
Sure, but most animals don't need to use tools. The reason why we emphasise that so much is because we rather fancy ourselves for our own use of tools. :) Animals do all sorts of other amazing things that we disregard in comparison to tools and in trying to observe mainly the anthropomorphisable aspects of animal life.
Oliver Schick
It's good, but it isn't astonishing to me, as there are so many stories about animals using tools, making inferences, and generally doing things that only humans supposedly do. Simply put, their minds work in exactly the same way in principle as ours, but they have different strengths and weaknesses, e.g. much better proprioception, the very obvious athletic strengths like being able to fly 10,000 miles every summer or be extremely strong, etc., which influence what they do and what they consequently think about. They are endlessly fascinating and we know so very little about them.