Wild cockatoos in Sydney, Australia have learned to drink from twist-handle water fountains, turning the knob with their feet and using their body weight to keep it open. They even queue to have a drink, waiting to take turns on the fountain, footage shows.
The behavior qualifies as a new local tradition, according to a study published Wednesday (June 4) in the journal Biology Letters that analyzed videos of these cockatoos showing off their fountain-manipulating skills.
City animals are remarkably flexible. Fast-changing urban environments can push animals to solve new problems. Some urban birds adapt their songs to be audible over noise pollution, or use human-made structures as substitutes for their natural nesting habitats. Studies have linked bigger brain size and more innovativeness to bird species that live in cities, meaning species that innovate and problem solve tend to adapt better in cities.
Cockatoos are particularly intelligent birds, able to use tools, solve puzzles, and even play golf. Sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) are native to Australia, and in Sydney they have learned to open trash bins, earning them the nickname “trash parrots.” They even manage to outwit humans trying to deter them in what scientists describe as an “innovation arms race.”
“[Cockatoos] have a playful curiosity,” Alice Auersperg, cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna in Austria who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science in an email. “They are highly persistent in their object manipulation, and easily reinforced if a behavior turns out to be rewarding.”
Related: Do parrots actually understand what they’re saying?
One researcher walking in Western Sydney in 2018 came across sulphur-crested cockatoos queuing up to use a drinking fountain. “When she reported this to the lab group, we all got very excited, and started planning how to best further study this unusual behavior,” study co-author Lucy Aplin, a cognitive ecologist at Australian National University, told Live Science in an email.
The research team installed two motion-triggered cameras surrounding one drinking fountain with a rubber top with embedded spout, and a spring-loaded twist handle. Analyzing the videos showed that operating these water fountains is not easy to stumble upon by accident: it requires fine motor skills and a coordinated sequence of actions….
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