![]() “This is the first time that one of these arms races have been described, as far as we know, to involve humans as well,” Farine says. When parasitic cuckoos lay eggs in other host species’ nests, for example, the egg color and pattern laid by both species tend to evolve as each attempts to outplay the other. The potential cockatoo arms race has a unique quality. Researchers believe the conflict could be the beginning of an innovation arms race. In human warfare, arms races occur when each side tries to outmaneuver the others’ weapons and defenses. Still, the cockatoos have found a way to exploit the human environment and “spoil themselves once a week with fast food,” Martin says. Garbage cans are put out only once a week, so the birds mostly eat seeds and plants. Sulfur-crested Cockatoos are not considered a species of concern by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and human leftovers are not their only food source. The researchers aren’t concerned about the impact of pawing trash on the birds’ health. Attaching a weight beneath the lid works best, says John Martin, an applied ecologist at Western Sydney University who participated in the research, since the cockatoos are not as strong as a garbage truck. Some even purchased and installed a commercially sold bin hook ($30 USD). They discovered that, like cockatoos, people learn the best strategies from each other: 172 people protected their bins and 64 percent used social information when choosing a strategy , such as placing rocks and bricks on lids, shoving shoes and sticks in hinges to jam them shut, and tying ropes to prevent lids from flipping all the way open. Researchers visited four suburbs, documenting 3,283 bins, and surveyed an additional 1,134 people from 401 suburbs. So, to be rid of the messy birds, garbage-can owners began testing some defensive strategies of their own. In southern Sydney, people can’t simply get new trash cans or lock their bins shut-the cans are custom fit to the municipality's garbage-truck model and the lids must swing open when the truck flips the cans upside down. “The homeowners don’t like because they have to go and clean up the streets,” says co-author Damien Farine, a social evolutionary ecologist at the University of Zurich. ![]() While the birds are beautiful, they have become unwelcome pests in the neighborhoods. “People actually socially learn from other people, especially their neighbors, about how to protect the bins.” “For some of the protections, the cockatoos actually learn how to defeat them, and then people come up with better, more effective methods,” says lead author Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. They suggest the conflict could be the beginning of an “innovation arms race,” where humans and cockatoos develop increasingly imaginative ways of outsmarting each other to control access to garbage cans. The researchers documented more than 50 strategies that people employed to keep cockatoos out of trash bins. This week, in Current Biology, a team published a follow-up study that focuses on the human side of the equation. Geographically separated cockatoo populations have different bin-opening techniques once one bird figures out how to flip the lid, other birds in the area watch and learn. Publishing their findings in Sciencein 2021, they showed that Sulfur-crested Cockatoos, which are native to forests of eastern and northern Australia, have developed this skill not only once but multiple times. ![]() Fascinated, the scientists wanted to know how cockatoos learned this new trick. Scientists first documented the cockatoos’ clever behavior eight years ago when Richard Major, an ornithologist at the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney, filmed a cockatoo opening a bin and shared it with colleagues. Once she’s had her fill, she hops to the bin next door. Then she flips the lid and reaches in, tossing out trash to uncover last night’s leftovers: bread and pizza. Standing on the bin’s edge, she pushes the brick with her beak until it falls off the edge. But ultimately it’s no sweat for this bird. One trash can owner has placed a brick on the lid to deter cockatoos. It takes some effort, but by stretching their legs, extending their necks, and tight-rope walking along the edge of a can, cockatoos can successfully use their beaks to flip open the hinged lids that are standard in Sydney’s suburbs. Within the past decade, Australia’s native parrots have figured out, and taught each other, how to open trash can lids. It’s trash day-the best day of the week for Sulfur-crested Cockatoos in southern Sydney.
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