It's September, and kids around the country are going back to school. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B took a group of Goffin's cockatoos to "school," too, and found that they could learn how to make and use simple tools, and then teach those skills to each other.
The study may be the first proof that birds can teach each other to use tools. Other studies have shown that birds like crows can learn how to use tools, but there has not previously been a controlled experiment showing that birds can then teach tool use to other birds.
This study used Goffin's cockatoo, a species of cockatoo found in Indonesia. These cockatoos don't normally use tools. However, the inspiration for this study came when researchers in Austria noticed a caged cockatoo create a wooden tool and use them to capture nuts that he couldn't reach otherwise. The researchers wondered if that bird, named "Figaro," could teach other birds how to do the same thing.
The scientists set up a controlled experiment in which the tool-using cockatoo was a teacher, letting other cockatoos watch him as he used a wooden tool. They had one group of cockatoos that saw only the tools moving the nuts, without watching Figaro use the tool, while the researchers controlled the tools with magnets. A third group watched the nuts seemingly move toward Figaro on their own, with the scientists using magnets to move the food in a "spontaneous" way.
After the demonstrations, each of the three groups were left in a situation with the ready-made wooden tool and a pile of nuts that they could not reach.
The researchers found that the group of cockatoos that saw a demonstration with Figaro using the tool seemed better able to grasp the problem in front of them and the method to use the tool. Of the six birds that saw the full demonstration, only the three male birds were able to successfully use the tool to get the nuts. The three female birds that saw the demonstration were unable to achieve the same results, although they seemed more focused on using the tool to get the nuts. None of the birds that saw the "ghost demonstration" without the cockatoo actively manipulating the tool were able to use the tool to move the nuts closer to them.
The three birds that successfully mastered the tool use did not simply imitate Figaro. They placed the stick under the nuts and flipped them upwards towards them, while Figaro had placed the sticks on top of the nuts and dragged them closer to him. This showed that the birds not only could understand concepts shown to them by other birds, but they were able to adapt to the situation in front of them.
"This means that although watching Figaro was necessary for their success they did not imitate his exact motor activities," Dr. Alice Auersperg, one of the researchers on the study, said. "This is typical of what psychologists would call emulation learning."
