Latest news with #LucyAplin
ABC News
10-06-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Lab Notes: What makes Sydney's cockies so clever?
Belinda Smith: First, they came for our rubbish. News grab: Move over Ibis, there's a new bin chicken in town. The iconic Aussie bird's mostly been prying open bin lids. Belinda Smith: And now, they're taking our water. News grab: Sulphur crested cockatoos in Western Sydney have been observed using public drinking fountains, learning to twist the handles and drinking from the bubblers. Belinda Smith: And it's not just one or two cockies doing this. More than 100 have been spotted drinking from bubblers. So, what do these entertaining exploits tell us about cocky innovation? And even about cocky culture? Hi, I'm Belinda Smith and you're listening to Lab Notes, the show that dissects the science behind new discoveries and current events. To explain why these birds are so bloody brainy is Lucy Aplin, a cognitive ecologist at the Australian National University. Now, I've seen children struggle to turn a water fountain tap and they have hands. Cockies have claws. So, how do they manage? Lucy Aplin: What they have to do is they have to hold on to the stem of the fountain. So, imagine a fountain you might get in your local sports fields, very classic upright model. So, they're gripping onto the stem of the upright part with one foot and then they're turning the twist handle with their other foot. Now, the twist handle has a spring in it. So, it'll come back so that the water doesn't run forever. So, the birds actually have to put their weight down to hold that spring. And then they have to twist their head back to drink the water while keeping the weight over the handle. So, it's quite a complex action that actually involves every body part. Belinda Smith: It's not just the strength to turn the tap but also the flexibility to kind of manoeuvre their body so that they can then enjoy the water that's coming out of the tap. Exactly, and Lucy Aplin: the foot-mouth coordination. I always say eye-hand-eye coordination, but foot-eye coordination, foot-eye-mouth coordination in this case. So, where do these particular cockies live? So, we observed this behaviour in the Western Sydney Parklands area just near Nurragingy Reserve, which is around sort of near Doonside train station, if anyone knows Western Sydney. Belinda Smith: In 2019, purely by chance, one of Lucy's colleagues, Barbara Klump, first spotted a thirsty cocky. Lucy Aplin: She was walking across the sports field and she saw them doing this. And she then walked into the Nurragingy Reserve, which is next door, and asked the rangers about it. And they said, oh yeah, they do it around here all the time. They've been doing it for ages. So, I think they thought it was a, you know, this is just what the local cockies do. As many Australians will attest, they do lots of weird and wonderful things. But we were pretty excited, so we thought, right, we have to study this. Belinda Smith: Then, not long after that initial sighting, Lucy and her team started keeping tabs on one particularly popular drinking fountain. The Lucy Aplin: drinking fountain that was most used was the one in the sports field right next to where the sleeping trees were. So, they were using it first thing in the morning and in the afternoon. How successful are they at getting water? So, we found when we did these intensive observations at one drinking fountain, that actually only about just under 50 per cent of the attempts were successful. So, individuals could try multiple times. And sometimes the attempts were unsuccessful because they were obviously distracted by the other birds that were queuing. Maybe a more dominant bird was queuing and they were trying to keep an eye on that bird at the same time and that was influencing their success. So, they were aware that this thing could produce water and were trying and were either in the process of learning or were very successful at it already. Belinda Smith: Ah, right. And so, did they learn from watching other cockies do it? Lucy Aplin: That's what we assume. So, we don't think that every individual cocky innovated this behaviour or we would be equally likely to see cockatoos drinking from drinking fountains all over Australia. Everywhere there are cockatoos and drinking fountains of which there are many places with both. So, we think that the evidence we have is highly suggestive that actually it's spreading through social learning. So, one bird or maybe a couple of birds initially invented this behaviour, worked it out and then other birds observed them and adopted the behaviour and it spread through the local group to form a local tradition in this area. So, Belinda Smith: when this behaviour was sort of first observed by your postdoc, Barbara, was this during a particularly dry Lucy Aplin: period? No, it was actually towards the end of winter. So, it would have been in August, September because that's when we're usually doing our fieldwork. So, it wasn't particularly dry. It was something that we were a little bit surprised by for that exact reason. We thought this is a really interesting behaviour for the technical innovation part of it. It seems quite complex and it's interesting to understand how it spreads and whether it's continuing to spread. But alongside that, there's this really interesting question which is what is the adaptive benefit of it? Because we'd just come off studying another innovation which was the bin opening behaviour which we're still studying in the south of Sydney. And there, it's really obvious what the cockatoos are getting out of it. They're getting bread or pasta or pizza or all high calorie items. Delicious things. Exactly. But here, there's an artificial lake that they've made in the lovely Chinese gardens in the Nurragingy Parklands. There's a local river they could be using. There's lots of local water sources and yet they seem to be preferring to do this highly complicated behaviour where often they also have to queue for it. So, it was a bit of a mystery we also wanted to solve as to why. So, did you find out? Well, we have three working hypotheses. Unfortunately, we couldn't answer them in this study but we're hoping to get to them. So, in this study, we wanted to ask just straightforward, are they using this as a supplement to other water sources? For example, when it's really hot and dry. And we saw no evidence for that. It seemed more like they were actually preferring to use drinking fountains over those other alternative water sources. So, then we had three follow on hypotheses. Maybe the water just tastes better. And that's not, I think, out of this world because if you think about whether you would rather go down to the creek, drink slimy, silty, muddy creek water. Or whether you might prefer a nice Sydney tap water, even though some people might be rude about Sydney tap water. It's probably still preferable to muddy creek water. So, that is a possibility that they're also making that choice. The other potential explanation we thought about is whether they just feel safer drinking from drinking fountains. Because they're usually, or all of these, in this case, were in picnic areas or they're on the edge of sports fields. So, they're in open areas with really good visibility. They're off the ground. And maybe that feels much safer than going down to that waterhole where maybe the predators are lurking behind the bush. Belinda Smith: Part of me also wonders if there's some payoff to actually working for the water. It makes me think of shelling pistachios. Somehow, the pistachio tastes much better if you're the one cracking it open. And it's like that little bit of work has just made the reward so much more tasty. Lucy Aplin: Yes. That exact phenomenon you're describing does have a scientific name. You know, there's jargon for everything. Yes, great. It's called contra-freeloading. And it means that you'd rather work a little bit for your reward than get it for free. And it is something that has been observed in humans. And it's also been observed in captive parrots. Belinda Smith: Okay, so we've got bin lid flipping cockies. We've got water fountain drinking cockies. What other behaviours have been reported in cockatoos? Lucy Aplin: So one I find perhaps a little bit disturbing is that they seem to have taken a liking in some parts of Sydney to drinking discarded energy drink cans or soft drink cans. So if they find them on the ground or in the rubbish, they'll pick them up using their bill into the sort of hole, you know, the drinking hole and then tip it back to try and get the drugs. Belinda Smith: Oh, my gosh. A caffeinated cocky. Exactly. Just what you need. Lucy Aplin: That's why I find that one a little bit disturbing. I'm not sure what the effect of caffeine is on cockatoos, but I don't think it'd be good. And we have going along the same sort of high energy line, just like we have observations of noisy miners in Rainbow Larrakeet stealing sugar packets, cockatoos will also occasionally steal sugar packets. That's been reported to us. And another innovation which has been reported to us from the south of Sydney, from the Northern Territory, amazingly, from a little community right up in Arnhem Land and from a couple of sites up in far north of Sydney is what we're calling the lunch bag innovation. It's a bit hard to know how to label this one. It seems to involve cockatoos going to schools where the kids leave their bags outside the classroom, unzipping the bags, taking out the lunch boxes and then undoing the lunch boxes and running off with the sandwiches. Belinda Smith: Oh, that's so cheeky. OK, so why and how can these cockies do such amazing and often annoying things? Lucy Aplin: There's a few hypotheses that have been put forward. When we look at overall brain size across parrots, it seems like one thing that fits really well is what we call the cognitive buffer hypothesis. And it's this idea that if you live a long time, which parrots do, your environment's going to be changing around you, unless you're in a really stable environment. But parrots are often not in a really stable environment. The environment's changing and having a large brain allows them to cope with that change that they might experience during their life. So it provides a buffer to the sort of swings and arrows of fortune by allowing you to work out solutions to changes. And that sort of explanation for the evolution of intelligence in parrots, it's not the only one, but that hypothesis fits really nicely with the urban adaptability that we see because urban environments are that. They're changing, novel environments where things can change. They can be pretty stable, but then they can change really rapidly when the local government decides to change all of the drinking fountains or whatever. So having a big brain might allow you to cope with that by learning new solutions and adjusting your behaviour. Belinda Smith: Wow. Just like us humans then. And cockies don't just have big brains. They also have a lot of cells or neurons in those brains. Lucy Aplin: So a cockatoo has about the same total number of neurons. So just straight count, not accounting for differences in body size or anything, just straight count. The same total number of neurons or similar to a macaque monkey, which is a medium sized monkey. Wow. So they're really punching above their weight. Like literally? Belinda Smith: Yes. These behaviours, they're kind of quirky and fun and maybe a bit messy, but they're very interesting. But what does this tell us about cocky culture? Lucy Aplin: Well, it tells us that they're very capable of learning from each other, from social learning. We have no evidence for teaching, so they're not doing that. Watch out if they start. No evidence for that. But they are very capable of observing other individuals and adopting the behaviour if it's beneficial. And they're capable of transmitting that behaviour over quite large geographic areas. Some of the studies we're doing now, they're not published yet, so I don't have the full set of results. But our preliminary results from experimental work is showing that actually new beneficial behaviours can spread over, say, the entire city of Canberra within just a couple of weeks. So the way their society is organised is really promotes that rapid spread and population level adoption of new behaviours. So I think that tells us something about the secret to their success and something about their life history in general. These are the elephants of the bird world. They're really long-lived, they're really brainy, and they're really social. And so they have a society that we recognise and we can also understand. We can look at what they're doing and understand it better than with some other species. Belinda Smith: That was Lucy Aplin, a cognitive ecologist at the Australian National University. She and her colleagues published their study about the water fountain drinking cockies in the Royal Society Biology Letters last week. And thanks for listening to Lab Notes on ABC Radio National, where every week we dissect the science behind new discoveries and current events. I'm Belinda Smith. This episode was produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Menang Noongar people. Fiona Pepper's the producer and it was mixed by Angie Grant. We'll catch you next week.
Boston Globe
04-06-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
‘Opportunistic' cockatoos wait in line, drink from fountains, study finds
The 'drinking-fountain innovation' is the second time researchers have found the birds adapting their behavior to suit their environment, following a 'bin-opening innovation' recorded by the same team in the city's south, where birds were found to open the lids of household trash cans to access food waste. Lucy Aplin, an associate professor at the Australian National University and the University of Zurich, said the study was carried out as part of the Clever Cockie project, aimed at understanding how city living can drive behavioral change and social sharing. She said cockatoos are an excellent case study, as they are 'opportunistic and successful' in human environments, while Australia's relatively short history of urbanization means that evolutionary changes can be effectively ruled out. Advertisement 'Cockatoos are fantastic urban adapters,' Aplin said. 'They're also the sort of elephant of the bird world. They're very long-lived, famously. They're also very slow-breeding and very intelligent, and so they're not the sort of species you would expect to be an automatic urban adapter, but they are.' Advertisement Aplin said her colleague Barbara C. Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior who led the research on the drinking-fountain study, 'literally stumbled' across cockatoos drinking from a fountain while out for a walk in western Sydney. Their team homed in on a 618-acre reserve in western Sydney made up of native vegetation, sports fields and, playgrounds that was home to a 'night roost' of about 100 to 150 birds. Researchers mapped 10 drinking fountains in the area and temporarily marked 24 cockatoos with identifying colors, which they estimate accounted for 16 to 24 percent of the local population. They also tagged two other individuals to gain information on long-term movements. From August to October 2019, they installed two cameras with a view of the fountain where cockatoos had been seen drinking. Known in Australia as a 'bubbler,' the fountain was made of a concrete stand about three feet high with a spring-loaded handle that needs to be twisted to operate. Footage over 44 days showed 525 attempts at drinking, with researchers estimating that 70 percent of the local population tried to drink from the fountain. Overall, birds were successful 41 percent of the time, with those who tried to access the water for longer, or with fewer other birds present, more likely to be successful. Footage from the cameras showed 'extensive queuing' before the birds gripped the handle of the fountain and twisted it with their feet, while also leaning their weight on the valve to ensure the water came out. Researchers found the number of attempts at drinking and success rate of the birds remained steady over the observation period, but a clear pattern emerged of birds coming to drink at 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Weather also impacted the visitation rate, with fewer attempts when it was raining, the team found. Advertisement Aplin said it is a case study of an innovation that has 'arisen in response to an urban resource that's been provided by humans and then has spread through the local cockatoo population to establish as a tradition.' The data also suggests the fountain drinking is more widespread among the local population than the garbage-bin-opening behavior was at first, suggesting it had already undergone 'extensive social diffusion' before the study took place, researchers said. Unlike the trash-opening study, where the practice was more common in males, researchers said there was no sex bias in attempts to use or success at using the fountain, suggesting perhaps that a sense of innovation is not varied by sex but rather by the resources of the bird— with bin opening requiring more strength and therefore being suited to larger birds. The team also observed a range of techniques used to open the fountain, suggesting individual learning plays a role and possibly that those that have not yet mastered it are trying different methods. It's the latest of findings that show how animals are adapting to urban environments around the world. Already, scientists have documented great tits and blue tits in Britain piercing the tops of milk bottles to drink their contents, bullfinches opening sugar packets in Barbados, and long-tailed macaques bartering objects for food in Indonesia. Urban parrots are renowned for being particularly successful adapters despite being threatened by habitat loss and the wildlife trade, researchers said, with rosy-faced lovebirds in Phoenix found to use air-conditioning vents to cool off. Advertisement Aplin said her team is calling on citizen scientists to report instances of unusual cockatoo behavior for further investigation. She is already interested in following up reports of cockatoos knocking on windows for food and opening children's school bags to steal from their lunchboxes. 'In Australia, the kids often leave their bags outside the classroom, and then the cockatoos have ready access to work down the line of bags and pull all the lunchboxes out,' she said, adding that some schools have adapted their policies in response. 'I get a lot of these reports from the public now, and it's fascinating to see the variety of behavioral flexibility and innovations that these birds come up with.'
RNZ News
04-06-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Sydney's sulphur-crested cockatoos spotted using drinking fountains
By Peter de Kruijff for ABC Sulphur-crested cockatoos line up to take a drink from a public fountain at a Sydney sporting reserve. Photo: Supplied / Royal Society Biology Letters First they opened bins, now crackles of Sydney's sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) have been recorded by scientists waiting their turn to use drinking fountains. The birds, which roost around the Western Sydney Parklands, have figured out how to operate twist-handled fountains, according to a new study. The behaviour was observed in a group of up to 200 birds, scientists report in The Royal Society Biology Letters . Study co-author Lucy Aplin, a behavioural and cognitive ecologist from the Australian National University, said it took coordinated actions for the birds to access water from the spring-loaded fountains. "It's just one of your bog-standard old-fashioned drinking fountains that you find all across sports fields in Australia," she said. "They [cockatoos] hold on to the stem and they twist with their foot but then they have to lean their weight while they twist as well. "They don't have the amount of strength that we have in our hand or the weight so they have to lean their whole body weight to keep it twisted." Dr Aplin said the whole process looked a "bit funny". "It's a bit of an awkward body position they have to hold, but it's pretty impressive," she said. Researchers captured cockatoos on video taking turns to use a drinking fountain. Photo: Supplied / Royal Society Biology Letters Sulphur-crested cockatoos are well known for their urban antics causing havoc on bin night in more than 60 suburbs in Sydney's south. But the population in Western Sydney is a different mob. After the study's lead author, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior's Barbara Klump, saw the drinking behaviour first-hand, she set up a study to track the behaviour of cockatoos around a well-used drinking fountain. First, the researchers identified 24 individual birds by painting them with dots, then they used wildlife cameras to monitor attempts to use the fountains by these and other birds in the local area. Over 44 days, the cameras recorded 525 attempts and collectively the birds were successful 41 per cent of the time they tried to drink, with the marked birds being slightly more successful. Dr Aplin said about 70 percent of the local birds, which roosted close by, were using the drinking fountain. "They use them as a preferred place to drink no matter whether it's hot or if there's other water sources available," she said. All ages and sexes participated too, unlike with the bin-opening behaviour, which is mostly done by males. "Something about the bin opening requires strength, and that's why it's male-biased," Dr Aplin said. "[Drinking from fountains is] a very complex behaviour that requires lots of different fine scale motor actions, but not brute force." Sulphur-crested cockatoos have been documented opening bins in Sydney. Photo: Supplied / Barbara Klump/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour Cockatoos are able to work out something tricky like turning a handle because they have brains that are relatively large for their bodies. Their forebrain, which deals with advanced cognitive abilities like tool use, is packed full of neurons, like chimpanzees, which also excel at complex problems. Alex Taylor, who studies biological intelligence at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said it was clearly tricky to get a tap to work when you had the body of a bird. "Which explains why birds are only successful 50 per cent of the time when trying to use the tap," Dr Taylor, who was not involved with the research, said. "Still this is a pretty good success rate on a hot day when you are thirsty." Dr Taylor said the study raised the question of why only a single species was exploiting human water taps and not others. The exact reason the cockatoos use the fountain instead of other water sources like a lake or creek is not understood. But there are several hypotheses that researchers want to test. "One possibility is the water just tastes better," Dr Aplin said. That is a theory Irene Pepperberg, an animal behaviourist from Boston University who was not involved in the study, also thought was possible. "The birds are probably attracted to fountains as being a source of cleaner water than available ponds," she said. "The resource is unlimited, so it is probably worth it to keep trying until they figure out the successful behaviour and, if they fail, they seem to have other water sources. "The birds do seem to learn about the source from one another; whether they learn the specific technique from each other is a bit less clear." Photo: Supplied / Staglands Wildlife Reserve Another idea is the birds like how the fountains sit about one metre off the ground. Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist from the University of Veterinary Medicine who was not part of the study, said this was because drinking from a ground source was risky and left them exposed to predators. But she said another reason they might use the fountains was because the birds liked to undertake an activity even if there was no food reward. Dr Pepperberg said she recently did a study with umbrella cockatoos where 40 per cent of the time they chose to shell nuts rather than eat ones that were already shelled. The team behind the new research hopes to drill down into the reasons behind the behaviour as well as other cockatoo innovations in future studies. Dr Aplin said she had received other reports of cockatoos using water fountains with levers and unzipping bags to access lunch boxes. She encouraged people who saw these kinds of behaviour to report it through the Big City Birds App. Gisela Kaplan, an emeritus professor of animal behaviour from the University of New England, said several bird species seemed to exploit taps in the outback in different ways to cockatoos. "The moment [the taps] are used, the birds now fly in and take the drops that fall down and then, once the person has left, also lick out the last drops that are in the tap," Professor Kaplan, who was not involved with the study, said. She said she had witnessed a great bowerbird in Larrimah, Northern Territory, work with its beak at a tap nozzle attachment until water drops were generated. Dr Aplin said ultimately, there was an important message behind all these observed behaviours beyond just funny anecdotes. "Urban animals that are adaptable and have expressed behavioural flexibility and have large brains are going to try and use the habitats that we provide them with," she said. "So if we want to increase biodiversity in cities, we need to think about increasing the sort of habitat requirements for species that might not be so adaptable." On the other hand, Dr Aplin added, we could also use urban design to manage those species that are more adaptable. - ABC
ABC News
03-06-2025
- General
- ABC News
Sydney's sulphur-crested cockatoos spotted using drinking fountains
First they opened bins, now crackles of Sydney's sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) have been recorded by scientists waiting their turn to use drinking fountains. The birds, which roost around the Western Sydney Parklands, have figured out how to operate twist-handled bubblers, according to a new study. The behaviour was observed in a group of up to 200 birds, scientists report in The Royal Society Biology Letters. Study co-author Lucy Aplin, a behavioural and cognitive ecologist from the Australian National University, said it took coordinated actions for the birds to access water from the spring-loaded fountains. "It's just one of your bog-standard old-fashioned drinking fountains that you find all across sports fields in Australia," she said. "They [cockatoos] hold on to the stem and they twist with their foot but then they have to lean their weight while they twist as well. Dr Aplin said the whole process looked a "bit funny". "It's a bit of an awkward body position they have to hold, but it's pretty impressive," she said. Sulphur-crested cockatoos are well-known for their urban antics causing havoc on bin night in more than 60 suburbs in Sydney's south. But the population in Western Sydney is a different mob. After the study's lead author, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior's Barbara Klump, saw the drinking behaviour first-hand, she set up a study to track the behaviour of cockatoos around a well-used drinking fountain. First the researchers identified 24 individual birds by painting them with dots, then they used wildlife cameras to monitor attempts to use the bubblers by these and other birds in the local area. Over 44 days, the cameras recorded 525 attempts and collectively the birds were successful 41 per cent of the time they tried to drink, with the marked birds being slightly more successful. Dr Aplin said about 70 per cent of the local birds, which roosted close by, were using the drinking fountain. "They use them as a preferred place to drink no matter whether it's hot or if there's other water sources available," she said. All ages and sexes participated too, unlike with the bin opening behaviour, which is mostly done by males. "Something about the bin opening requires strength, and that's why it's male biased," Dr Aplin said. "[Drinking from bubblers is] a very complex behaviour that requires lots of different fine scale motor actions, but not brute force." Cockatoos are able to work out something tricky like turning a handle because they have brains that are relatively large for their bodies. Their forebrain, which deals with advanced cognitive abilities like tool use, is packed full of neurons like chimpanzees, which also excel at complex problems. Alex Taylor, who studies biological intelligence at the the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said it was clearly tricky to get a tap to work when you had the body of a bird. "Which explains why birds are only successful 50 per cent of the time when trying to use the tap," Dr Taylor, who was not involved with the research, said. "Still this is a pretty good success rate on a hot day when you are thirsty." Dr Taylor said the study begged the question of why only a single species was exploiting human water taps and not others. The exact reason the cockatoos use the bubbler instead of other water sources like a lake or creek is not understood. But there are several hypotheses that researchers want to test. "One possibility is the water just tastes better," Dr Aplin said. That's a theory Irene Pepperberg, an animal behaviourist from Boston University who was not involved in the study, also thought was possible. "The resource is unlimited, so it is probably worth it to keep trying until they figure out the successful behaviour and, if they fail, they seem to have other water sources. "The birds do seem to learn about the source from one another; whether they learn the specific technique from each other is a bit less clear." Another idea is the birds like how the bubblers sit about 1 metre off the ground. Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist from the University of Veterinary Medicine who was not part of the study, said this was because drinking from a ground source was risky and left them exposed to predators. But she said another reason they might use the bubblers was because the birds liked to undertake an activity even if there was no food reward. Dr Pepperberg said she recently did a study with umbrella cockatoos where 40 per cent of the time they chose to shell nuts rather than eat ones that were already shelled. The team behind the new bubbler research hopes to drill down into the reasons behind the behaviour as well as other cockatoo innovations in future studies. Dr Aplin said she had received other reports of cockatoos using bubblers with levers and unzipping bags to access lunch boxes. She encouraged people who saw these kinds of behaviour to report it through the Big City Birds App. Gisela Kaplan, an emeritus professor of animal behaviour from the University of New England, said several bird species seemed to exploit taps in the outback in different ways to cockatoos. "The moment [the taps] are used, the birds now fly in and take the drops that fall down and then, once the person has left, also lick out the last drops that are in the tap," Professor Kaplan, who was not involved with the study, said. She said she had witnessed a great bowerbird in Larrimah, Northern Territory, work with its beak at a tap nozzle attachment until water drops were generated. Dr Aplin said ultimately there was an important message behind all these observed behaviours beyond just funny anecdotes. "Urban animals that are adaptable and have expressed behavioural flexibility and have large brains are going to try and use the habitats that we provide them with," she said. "So if we want to increase biodiversity in cities, we need to think about increasing the sort of habitat requirements for species that might not be so adaptable." On the other hand, Dr Aplin added, we could also use urban design to manage those species that are more adaptable.
