Residents of southern Sydney, Australia, have been in a long-term battle over trash: humans want to throw it away and cockatoos want to eat it. The sulphur-crested cockatoos that call the area home have a knack for getting into garbage cans, and people have been using inventive devices to keep them out. Researchers detail the techniques used by both people and parrots in a study published Sept. 12 in the journal Current Biology.
“When I first saw a video of cockatoos opening containers I thought it was such an interesting and unique behavior and knew we had to study it,” says lead author Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animals. behavior
Cockatoos’ motivation is food waste. “They really like bread,” he says. “Once a litter box is opened, all the cockatoos in the vicinity will come and try to eat something nice.”
Birds usually open containers with their beaks and then move to a small edge and open the lid. It’s a community affair. “We could actually show that this is a cultural trait,” says Klump. “Cockatoos learn behavior by watching other cockatoos and within each group they have their own special technique, so over a wide geographic range the techniques are more different.”
Human residents trying to keep the cockatoos out cannot simply secure the bin lids completely closed because the lids must be opened when tilted by an automated garbage truck arm. A survey by researchers found that people put bricks and stones on the lids of their bins, tape water bottles to the top, attach ropes to prevent the lid from moving, use sticks to block the hinges and changes tactics once the cockatoos discover them. . “There are even commercially available cockatoo locks for containers,” says Klump.
“It’s not just social learning on the cockatoo side, it’s also social learning on the human side,” he says. “People invent new methods of protection on their own, but a lot of people learn it from their neighbors or people on their street, so they get inspired by someone else.”
Klump won’t say who she expects to win the race for control of the bins, but she and her colleagues plan to see how the cockatoos’ behavior varies from season to season.
Klump hopes we’ll see more of these kinds of human-wildlife interactions in the future. “As cities expand, we will have more interactions with wildlife,” he says. “I hope there will be a better understanding and more tolerance for the animals we share our lives with.”
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