In solving complex problems, cockatoos will be able to compete with ravens

No wonder parrots are considered one of the most intelligent birds in the world. This reputation is fostered by stories of talking birds, as well as scientific experiments that demonstrate the special abilities of parrots. In this row, cockatoos are perhaps in the first place. However, parrots have a serious competitor - the raven. These wise birds are able to create tools that make their life easier and pass on knowledge from generation to generation. Recently, however, the cockatoo managed to do something that fifteen years earlier, the female New Caledonian raven Betty struck scientists.

Smarter than a preschooler

In the early 2000s, Betty's New Caledonian raven stunned the scientific world when she spontaneously bent a hook from a wire to extract a small basket of food from a vertical tube. It is interesting that human children faced great difficulties before a similar task, and the solution came to their mind no earlier than seven years of age. At the same time, the New Caledonian crows with great skill wield tools in the wild, passing this ability by inheritance. Betty's case was unique because the bird was able to create a new behavioral sequence in unknown conditions.

Back then, the study of bird cognition was still a young field of research, and Betty's ability to bend a wire hook became an example of the intelligent manufacture of animal tools. To date, brain and behavioral studies have shown that some birds, such as corvids and parrots, seem to have sophisticated cognition at the level of higher primates, showing similar numbers of neurons in the corresponding areas of the brain.

Hooking Virtuosi

With ravens it’s clear, but how are you doing with parrots? Scientists also asked this question and offered the cockatoo to solve the same problem that Betty had easily solved one and a half dozen years ago: they were asked to pull out a basket with a handle, full of goodies, from a vertical pipe. For the purity of the experiment, the cockatoos had to solve another problem: the food was placed in the center of a horizontal pipe.

Removing the reward from the vertical pipe required the birds to bend the hook from the wire and pull out the basket. The horizontal pipe, in turn, required the birds to bend the curved part of the wire in order to push the food out.

Several birds coped with the first task, and one coped with both. Although in the wild, cockatoos do not have to use such tricks, the very ability of their brain to find such complex solutions opens a new page in the study of bird intelligence for scientists.