It’s as yet unclear how many sugars they take in their tea.
Goffin’s cockatoos can carry around multiple tools to allow them to complete complex tasks, researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna have found. The behaviour has previously only been observed in chimpanzees.
Hailing from the Tanimbar Islands in Indonesia, Goffin’s cockatoos are small white birds that belong to the parrot family. Previous studies have shown that they are highly intelligent and capable of not only using a variety of different tools to gather food but also making them.
To test whether the cockatoos were able to use different tools in combination, the team set them a task inspired by the termite-fishing Goualougo Triangle chimpanzees of northern Congo – the only non-human animal known to use toolsets.
Whereas the chimps break holes into a termite mound with a blunt stick and then fish out the termites with a long, flexible stick, the team tasked the cockatoos with punching a hole in a paper membrane and fishing out a cashew nut placed behind it. They provided the birds with a short, pointy stick for breaking through the paper and a long plastic straw to fish out the nut.
Seven of the ten cockatoos completed the task, while two of them – Figaro and Fini – proved especially adept and extracted the nuts within 35 seconds of their first attempt.
“With this experiment we can say that, like chimpanzees, Goffin’s cockatoos not only appear to be to using toolsets, but they know that they are using toolsets,” said research lead Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. “Their flexibility of behaviour is stunning.”
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Next, to test the cockatoos’ ability to select the correct tools for the job, the researchers presented them with two boxes – one with a paper membrane and one without. Again, the birds passed with flying colours.
“The cockatoos had to act according to the problem; sometimes the toolset was needed, and sometimes only one tool was enough,” said Osuna-Mascaró.
“When making the choice between which tool to use first, they were picking one up, releasing it, then picking up the other one, releasing it, returning to the first one, and so on.”
Finally, the team tested the cockatoos’ ability to carry around the tools as a set. To do this, they had them go through an obstacle course in order to reach the boxes. First, the cockatoos had to climb a short ladder while carrying their tools, then they had to fly across a gap with them; and finally, they had to carry the tools while flying upwards.
As before, the birds were only sometimes presented with a box with a paper membrane, so they had to decide whether the problem required one or both tools.
Some of the cockatoos learned to carry the two tools together—by inserting the short punching stick into the groove of the halved straw—when they were presented with a box that required both, while others made two trips. Figaro once again proved to be the star and carried his toolset around with him in almost every trial, selecting the right tools for the job each time.
Read more about animal intelligence:
- Chimpanzees observed digging wells after being taught how by an immigrant female
- Frog-eating bats can form long-term memories, study using phone ringtones discovers
- No, Bunny the talking dog can’t really speak English, but here’s how you can learn to speak dog