Lifting the lid on learning is a feather in this cocky birds cap

By Ryland Sack July 23, 2021 â€" 7.50pm

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are teaching each other how to open rubbish bins and steal the food inside, a recent study has shown.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos learn skills from their peers - including how to open and scavenge from bins.Credit:Angela Wylie

Researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour have compiled observations of sulphur-crested cockatoos using their beaks and feet to lift heavy rubbish bin lids in suburban streets across Sydney in order to forage for food.

The two-year study, published on Friday in Science, revealed the novel bin-opening technique spread more quickly through neighbouring communities of cockatoos than to isolated groups of birds, suggesting the behaviour may be passed through communities via imitative behaviour.

“Monkey see, monkey do â€" that is the classic saying,” said Dr John Martin, a research scientist at the Taronga Conservation Society Australia and co-author of the study.

“The cultural aspect of it comes in from us being able to say ‘birds in this location do it this way, and then the birds in [another] location a short distance away would [do it] in a slightly different way’.”

Scientists have long assumed that only humans can effectively share learnings between a large group. But the cockatoo’s bin-opening trick is just a recent addition to the growing evidence not just that animals can learn, but that they can share that learning with others.

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Emeritus Professor Gisela Kaplan at the University of New England devoted a large part of her career to observing learned behaviour in Australian birds.

“It was always thought that birds function by instinct but that’s absolutely not true,” Professor Kaplan said.

“Just about every vertebrate has to learn, because it gets born into a world where there are multitude of experiences.”

A dolphin mother and calf in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Credit:Simon Allen

Dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, have been seen to pick up sponges off a coral reef to cover their faces while hunting fish, a trait passed on to the young in their community.

Whales have developed methods of hunting and communicating using group-specific calls, with a recent study finding sperm whales may have used sonar clicks to warn others of approaching harpooning ships.

Chimpanzees are known to form complex social communities and cultures, allowing the learning of hunting techniques, tool use and, uniquely, grass-based fashion to be acquired by individuals.

Chief scientist at the Australian Museum Research Institute Professor Kris Helgen said culturally transmitted learning, a trait that was originally thought to be uniquely human, was more common than initially thought in the animal kingdom.

“Animals are capable of the most complicated kinds of behaviours you could imagine … but almost all of that behaviour as we know it and study it is largely inherited genetically.

“Culture at its most basic is not something instinctual or something that is genetically inherited â€" it is something that is learned and modified through time.”

Professor Helgen said the results from the study on cockatoos was exciting, partly because it was a home-grown discovery of social learning.

“It’s not in some distant rainforest where chimps are doing something clever and teaching their kids about it,” he said.

“It’s cockatoos in our own suburbs that have been developing some of these techniques â€" other birds are watching them, learning them … and they’re spreading like wildfire.

“This human environment we have in Sydney suburbs has us putting out our bins at times that the birds can learn and understand â€" these birds are clever, and they’re going to keep learning.”

Dr Martin said the observations from Sydneysiders were critical to the study, and he called on all Australians to record their own cockatoo behaviour sightings via the Big City Birds citizen science program.

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