section_path: Definition
section_name: Definition
paragraph_text: Definition
  
  While a common-sense understanding of the meaning of tool is widespread, several formal definitions have been proposed.
  
  In 1981, Benjamin Beck published a widely used definition of tool use. This has been modified to:
  
  The external employment of an unattached or manipulable attached environmental object to alter more efficiently the form, position, or condition of another object, another organism, or the user itself, when the user holds and directly manipulates the tool during or prior to use and is responsible for the proper and effective orientation of the tool.
  
  Other, briefer definitions have been proposed:
  
  An object carried or maintained for future use.
  
  The use of physical objects other than the animal's own body or appendages as a means to extend the physical influence realized by the animal.
  
  An object that has been modified to fit a purpose... An inanimate object that one uses or modifies in some way to cause a change in the environment, thereby facilitating one's achievement of a target goal.