Clever cockatoos bring a ‘toolbox’ when they go fishing for food

VIENNA, Austria — Clever cockatoos take a “toolkit” with them when they fish for cashews, a new study reveals. Goffin’s cockatoos are small white parrots from the Tanimbar Islands archipelago in Indonesia. According to researchers, they’re only the second non-human animals after chimpanzees to use and transport multiple tools with them.

A recent study of wild-caught members of the species found that they can use up to three different tools to extract seeds from a particular fruit. However, it’s unclear whether the birds consider all of these tools a “set.” Now, researchers are using controlled experiments to show that cockatoos do indeed recognize when certain jobs need more than one tool.

“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,” says first author Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, in a media release. “Their flexibility of behavior is stunning.”

Osuna-Mascaró was inspired by the termite-fishing Goualougo Triangle chimps of northern Congo, the only other tool-using non-human animal that humans know about. The chimps use a blunt stick to smash holes in the termite mound. They then insert a long, flexible probe to “fish” the termites out of the holes.

In the new study, published in the journal Current Biology, researchers presented the cockatoos with a box containing a cashew sitting behind a transparent paper barrier. To reach the nut, the birds had to punch through the membrane and then “fish” the cashew out. Researchers provided them with a short, pointy stick for punching holes and a straw sliced in half to scoop up the cashew.

Seven of the 10 birds taught themselves how to extract the cashews successfully by poking through the paper. Two of them, Figaro and Fini, completed the task within 35 seconds on their first try.

A cockatoo sitting on a perch using a tool
This is a photograph of a cockatoo using the second tool (a vertically halved straw) to fish out a cashew. CREDIT: Thomas Suchanek

Researchers also tested the cockatoos’ ability to change their tool use in a flexible manner depending on the situation. They presented each bird with two types of boxes. One had a membrane while the other did not. The cockatoos received the same two tools, but they only needed the pointy stick when a paper membrane was in the way.

“The cockatoos had to act according to the problem; sometimes the toolset was needed, and sometimes only one tool was enough,” says Osuna-Mascaró.

All of the birds mastered the test quickly and recognized when they could get the job done with a single tool.

“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,” the researcher continues.

The team found that when cockatoos did the switching, they performed better on the tests. Next, they tested the cockatoos’ ability to transport the tools as a set (like carrying a toolbox) on an as-needed basis by putting the birds through a series of increasingly difficult trials to reach the cashew box. Most of birds carried the toolset on an as-needed basis, proving that they knew ahead of time when they needed two tools or just one. However, some birds made two trips when necessary. One of the birds, Figaro, decided not to waste time thinking and carried both tools in almost every test.

A cockatoo flying with tools to a perch
This is a series of photos of Figaro the Goffin’s cockatoo flying while carrying a set of two tools towards a box containing a cashew. CREDIT: Thomas Suchanek

“We really did not know whether the cockatoos would transport two objects together,” says Alice Auersperg, senior author on the study and a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. “It was a little bit of a gamble because I have seen birds combining objects playfully, but they very rarely transport more than one object together in their normal behavior.”

“We feel that, in terms of technical cognition and tool use, parrots have been underestimated and understudied,” says Auersperg.

“We’ve learned how dexterous the cockatoos are when using a toolset, and we have a lot of things to follow-up on,” Osuna-Mascaró concludes. “The switching behavior is very interesting to us, and we are definitely going to use it to explore their decision making and their metacognition—their ability to recognize their own knowledge.”

South West News Service writer Stephen Beech contributed to this report.

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