The engagement of the brain ramp on between cockatoo and their corvid cousins . Just last month , a study showed how New Caledonian crowscan make their own toolsby combining several different independent parts . Never ones to be demonstrate up , cockatoos have now essay that they are a splash hand at tool craft as well .
A new work , publish in the journalPLOS ONE , has designate how Goffin ’s cockatoo are able-bodied to craft textile to make a tool . The experiments used a motley crew of plucky cockatoo – Dolittle , Figaro , Kiwi , Konrad , Pipin , and Fini – to demonstrate how the birds can set the distance of cardboard strips to produce a peter that can reach food . Oddly , however , all but one of the cockatoo were rather snort - brained when it came to adapt the strip ’s width to fit it through narrow openings .
Along with great apes and crows , cockatoo are among the very few beast that have the prospicience , flexibleness of behavior , and problem - solving skills to pull off this task .
" The way they inserted and put away manufacture slice of specific length other than reckon on condition intimate that the cockatoo could indeed adjust their creature - make conduct in the predicted way but with some terminal point in truth , " Alice Auersperg , from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria , said in astatement .
In this research , six cockatoo were faced with a opus of cardboard and a see - through perspex box with seeds inside . to obtain the much - desired snack , they had to strip away pieces of the composition board to make themselves a cardboard poky tool .
All six of the cockatoos managed to wreak out how to adjust the distance of their cardboard landing strip tool to report for variation in food for thought length . However , when it came to making a sufficiently slight tool to reach the solid food when the opening was at its narrow-minded , just one undivided bird was able-bodied to make a suitable shaft .
Goffin ’s cockatoo ( Cacatua goffiniana ) is a coinage of parrot native to Indonesia , although it ’s been introduced to Puerto Rico and Singapore . A number of former studies have shown how cockatoo use tools , many of which have been grow by the Goffin Lab at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna . One study in 2016found that cockatoo can actively determine what pecker to use based on what food for thought is available and what food they might be able to get by using a peter .
Despite that old playground slur , you should never underestimate abird brain .
