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Why Australia's Trash Bin–Raiding Cockatoos Are the 'Punks of the Bird World'

Why Australia's Trash Bin–Raiding Cockatoos Are the 'Punks of the Bird World'

Why Australia's Trash Bin–Raiding Cockatoos Are the 'Punks of the Bird World'
Jul 22, 2021 1 min, 35 secs

In 2014, this behavior earned the cockatoos a bit of bad press in the local community magazine.

At the time, he hadn’t witnessed the crime firsthand yet, but he and his fellow researchers decided to investigate the behavior in 2018.

Now, in a new study published today in the journal Science, the team reports these clever cockatoos can learn this garbage foraging behavior within their social groups, with more birds picking up the skill each year.

“Cockatoos are the punks of the bird world” in both looks and character, says study author John Martin, an ecologist at Taronga Conservation Society, Australia.

(Martin says flocks of cockatoos “literally scream” every sunrise and sunset.) Their foraging habits are inventive, if not a bit annoying.

Three years, 160 direct observations and one large-scale citizen science survey later, the researchers confirmed that the clever cockatoos can learn how to open garbage bins by observing other pioneering parrots.

“It’s really exciting that [the researchers] were able to catch [bin opening] in real time,” says Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna in Austria, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Only three districts had ever observed cockatoos opening bins before 2018, but by 2019, 44 areas reported the behavior.

Since not all cockatoos catch on, the researchers suggest the innovative foraging behavior could be an example of social learning rather than a genetic predisposition.

To analyze the mechanics of bin opening à la cockatoo, the researchers filmed 160 instances of the behavior in three locations.

“The ones that can do it make it look so easy,” says study author Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.

Martin, who lives in Sydney and adores cockatoos, says several flocks squat in his corner of town, each crew around 50 members strong.

He has yet to observe bin opening behavior in his district, but he anticipates it could catch on eventually.

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