All rooks do, according to the Victorian poet Mrs Craik, is “jangle and plunder”. New research shows, however, that they are more sophisticated plunderers than she suspected.

The large black birds have astounded scientists by showing for the first time that they are as adept at making and using tools with their beaks as chimpanzees are with their hands.

Given tasks to test their ingenuity, rooks were able not only to select the correct tools for the job but also to fashion hooks out of wire, whittle sticks and select suitable stones.

Scientists said the results showed that the birds, from the crow family, had a high degree of innate intelligence rather than mere adaptability.

Chris Bird, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead researcher, said: “Rooks are rivalling habitual tools users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows [famed for their tool dexterity] when tested in captivity.

“When I saw them making hooks I had to rein in in my enthusiasm in case they saw it and reacted to that, but these are fantastic findings. Birds’ brains are so differently constructed from primates’ it’s amazing that they can carry out similar tasks.” The results of the study are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using four hand-raised birds, the researchers rigged a series of challenges for them to release food from glass tubes. The first featured a worm on a platform that would collapse, allowing it to be eaten if a stone were nudged into the tube. All four birds completed the task.

They also chose stones of appropriate shape for tubes of differing sizes.The rooks were also quick to realise that long, thin stones would fit in every tube, regardless of its diameter, as long as it went in lengthways.

Even two-stage tests, such as using a large stone to release a smaller one that would fit into the tube, or pruning twigs to fit, proved no obstacle. In other tests, a small bucket with a handle containing the bird’s dinner was placed at the bottom of the tube and a stick with a hook on the end left within easy reach. Three of the rooks extracted their dinner at the first try.

The birds were then put in front of the same tube but with a straight piece of wire. All four rooks manufactured a hook and used it to extract the bucket.Mr Bird said that the results of his tests were all the more amazing because rooks did not use tools in the wild, and his four birds were all hand-raised and had no previous experience of tool-making.

“In the wild, rooks don’t have the motivation to use tools because there is a wide variety of food they can eat: seeds, carrion, worms, refuse. But in the lab we gave them the motivation and they used their intelligence,” he said.

“Rooks have been shown to rival chimpanzees in physical tasks, leading us to question our understanding of the evolution of intelligence.”

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