Crows and starlings are to be enlisted by a new Oxford University spin-off company which aims to advise businesses how to manage risk.

Oxford Risk Research and Analysis (ORRA) has been set up by Oxford University zoologist Sir John Krebs, who is also chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency.

His co-founders from the zoology department are Prof Alex Kacelnik, the professor of behavioural ecology, and Dr Ed Mitchell, who is researching decision-making in the offshore oil industry.

They belong to the Behavioural Ecology Research Group, which hit the headlines earlier this year for teaching Betty the Crow to make a tool -- a skill previously thought to be unique to humans.

She learned to bend a piece of wire to retrieve food from a container.

The group's research into how birds forage for food is now being used to train human decision-makers to avoid bias.

Sir John said: "Human beings and other animals respond to risk in similar ways. The tools we have developed for animal behaviour also work for humans.

"It turns out that we can get real insights into how businesses respond to risk when they make decisions.

"We show companies how to improve their response to risk and, therefore, how to make better decisions."