Parrots’ go to carpentry school

Scientists from Oxford University, the University of Vienna, and the Max Planck Institute at Seewiesen have shown that a spontaneous innovation by a Goffin's cockatoo can spread to other conspecifics by social learning. After observing that an adult male Goffin cockatoo named Figaro spontaneously started to sculpt stick tools out of wooden aviary beams to use them for raking in nuts out of his reach, the researchers wondered what effect, if any, such individual invention might have on social companions. They used Figaro as a role model and treated other birds to different degrees of exposure of his crafts. One experimental cockatoo group were allowed to observe Figaro skilfully employing a ready-made stick tool, while another could see what researchers call "ghost demonstrations", either seeing the tools displacing the nuts by themselves, while being controlled by magnets hidden under a table, or seeing the nuts moving towards Figaro without his intervention, again using magnets to displace the food. They were all then placed in front of the same problem, with a ready-made tool lying on the ground nearby. Three males and three females that saw Figaro's complete demonstration interacted much more with potential tools and other components of the problem than those seeing ghost demos. Remarkably, all three males in this group acquired proficient tool use, while neither the females in the same group, nor males and females in the ghost demonstration groups did.