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A captive-bred Goffin's cockatoo has surprised
researchers by spontaneously making and using "tools" to reach food.
The species is not known to use tools in the wild.
Researchers in Austria recorded the cockatoo - named Figaro - repeatedly
breaking off splinters from a wooden beam and using them to reach nuts
on the other side of his wire enclosure.
The team believe Figaro's feat is the first recorded instance of
tool-making among parrots.
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The study, published in the journal Current Biology, was carried out at
an aviary near Vienna by scientists from the University of Oxford; the
University of Vienna and the Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology in
Germany.
"No-one has ever reported [a parrot] sculpturing a tool out of shapeless
wood in order to use it later with great sophistication," said Professor
Alex Kacelnik of Oxford University, an author of the study.
While birds from the corvid family, such as New Caledonian crows, are
known to make tools in the wild, this specialised ability is very rarely
reported in other bird species.
Researchers were unexpectedly alerted to Figaro's tool-using ability
while he was playing with a pebble and accidentally dropped it out of
reach on the other side of his wire mesh enclosure.
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After some unsuccessful attempts to reach his toy with his claw, Figaro
used a stick from the aviary floor to try to fish for the object,
levering it with his beak.
The team then carried out a series of tests that involved placing nuts
outside the cockatoo's enclosure, and video-recorded the results.
In the first test, Figaro tried unsuccessfully to reach the nut with a
stick that was too short.
He then made his own tool by biting large splinters from a wooden beam.
When they were the right size and shape to use as a "raking" tool, he
would use them to successfully collect the nuts.
The team repeated the exercise in 10 trials over three days. Figaro was
successful each time in making and using tools to retrieve the nut.
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The time that it took the cockatoo to manufacture suitable tools also
improved over the course of the tests.
"It's almost as if he discovered a solution and then managed to apply
it," Prof Kacelnik told BBC Nature.
But he added: "Nobody yet understands in what sense tool-use requires a
very high level of intelligence."
While Figaro is alone among Goffin's cockatoos to have been recorded
making and using tools, Prof Kacelnik says that his behaviour could
display a "level of intelligence for solving a new problem" in the
species.
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