#Cacatua goffiniana

[necrofauna]

[helluvatimes]

The Fruitful One

A Tanimbar Cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana) peeking at the photographer from behind a tree in the Bird Paradise. Photo credit: Jonathan Chua.

This small “near threatened” cockatoo is said to breed well in captivity and so we actually have a large avicultural population.

[fumpkins]

Wild cockatoos make their own cutlery sets | Science

Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) are so clever they’ve been compared to 3-year-old people. But what 3-year-old has made their own cutlery set? Scientists have actually observed wild cockatoos, members of the parrot household, crafting the equivalent of a crowbar, an ice choice, and a spoon to pry open among their preferred fruits. This is the very first time any bird types has actually been seen producing and utilizing a set of tools in a particular order—a cognitively difficult habits formerly understood just in people, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys.

The work “supports the idea that parrots have a general [type of] intelligence that allows them to innovate creative solutions to the problems they run into in nature,” states Alex Taylor, a biologist who research studies New Caledonian crows at the University of Auckland. “[It] establishes this species as one of the avian family’s most proficient wild tool users.”

The discovery took place serendipitously when behavioral ecologist Mark O’Hara was dealing with wild however captive birds in a research aviary on Yamdena Island in Indonesia. “I’d just turned away, and when I looked back, one of the birds was making and using tools,” states O’Hara, of the Messerli Research Institute. “I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

The Goffin’s cockatoo is understood for being a smart and ingenious social student. In captivity, the birds have solved complex puzzle boxes and invented rakelike tools to recover things. Several other birds, consisting of hyacinth macaws and New Caledonian crows, make and usage tools in the wild, typically to extract food, however none appears to make a set of tools.

For the brand-new research study, O’Hara and his coworkers took a trip to this cockatoo’s house on Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands. The birds live high in the tropical forest canopy, making them challenging to observe. The researchers invested nearly 900 hours appreciating view wild cockatoos feed, however didn’t witness tool usage.

So, the group recorded little flocks of 15 people at a time and brought them to their research study aviary to study for a number of months prior to setting them totally free. With their strong, curved beaks, Goffin’s cockatoos can eat lots of kinds of fruit. The researchers offered the birds with papayas and young coconuts, however the parrots never ever produced a single tool to assist consume those foods. “They were playful and would pick up sticks, and bite off twigs,” O’Hara includes, “but not in any purposeful way.”

Then one day in June 2019, while viewing wild cockatoos in the forest, O’Hara discovered fruit on the ground with cockatoo bitemarks. Local employee determined the egg-shaped fruit as that of the sea mango tree, wawai in Tanimbarese. The fruits had actually just recently entered season, and O’Hara offered a handful to the cockatoos in the aviary to see how they would react. About the size of a little avocado and hazardous to people, the fruits include a reddish pulp surrounding a tough pit that encloses little, healthy seeds. Getting to those seeds isn’t simple, even for a bird with a knifelike beak.

O’Hara enjoyed in awe as a male cockatoo bit away the fruit’s skin, then rapidly severed a little branch from a tree inside the aviary, and with a series of fast bites whittled its thick stump into a wedge-shaped tool. Holding the fruit with his left foot while setting down on his right, he utilized his tongue to fit the wedge into the pit’s crack, spying the pit open. Next, he formed a splinter into a sharp, narrow tool and utilized this to pierce the parchmentlike interior skin securing the seeds. Finally, the cockatoo fabricated a third tool from another little bit of wood, biting it into a flattened strip that he utilized to spoon out the seeds (as seen in the video, above), the group reports today in Current Biology.

The researchers offered the flock with an all set supply of the fruits, however just 2 males made and utilized the tools—and got to consume the seeds. “If they had a genetic predisposition to use tools, all the birds would do it,” O’Hara states. “Since only a few make these, it’s more likely they invented them independently,” he states, which they find out to do it from each other in the wild.

Most of the other cockatoos in this flock were more youthful birds who viewed the older birds’ actions with extreme interest. They even had fun with the grownups’ tools, however possibly were too young to handle the jobs themselves, O’Hara hypothesizes. “We know they learn socially from each other in captivity,” includes Berenika Mioduszewska, a relative psychologist who co-led and co-authored the research study and is likewise at the Messerli Research Institute, “so it is likely the same in the wild.”

Since making this discovery, the researchers have actually discovered cockatoo tool marks on wawai fruits in the wild, and even obtained one fruit with a tool penetrated it. Avian archaeology, anybody?

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2021/09/01/wild-cockatoos-make-their-own-cutlery-sets-science/

[sciencespies]

Researchers have finally observed these crafty cockatoos making 'cutlery' in the wild

https://sciencespies.com/nature/researchers-have-finally-observed-these-crafty-cockatoos-making-cutlery-in-the-wild/

Researchers have finally observed these crafty cockatoos making 'cutlery' in the wild

Goffin’s cockatoos, so adept at toolmaking in a laboratory setting, have now demonstrated their engineering chops in the wild.

In their natural habitat on the Tanimbar Islands in Maluku, Indonesia, scientists have finally observed the birds (Cacatua goffiniana) making tools that help them gain better access to food.

The results demonstrate that the previous behavior wasn’t just captivity bias – as had been suggested – but something the birds do quite naturally on their own, away from the influence of humans.

“I couldn’t believe it!” said cognitive biologist Mark O’Hara of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, in Austria.

“When I offered them (the cockatoos) a certain fruit from the forest, one of the cockatoos began to make a tool out of a branch. It was amazing how skillfully and competently the bird knew how to use this tool.”

Tool-making has been observed in a few species now, such as primates and corvids. Cockatoos, although they have many things in common with primates (such as large brains and complex social networks), were thought to be an unlikely candidate to demonstrate such skills, however. This is because their clever feet and sharp beaks are equal to most tasks that such birds might need to perform. Their tools are, essentially, built-in.

But in the last few years, scientists in a laboratory setting observed Goffins first using pre-made tools, then making their own. But it wasn’t clear whether those behaviors were the result of captivity bias – in which captive animals outperform wild ones in terms of tool use.

So O’Hara and his colleagues set out for the Tanimbar Islands to see if they could spot some Goffins using or making tools in their natural habitat. They set up cameras in the tree canopies where the birds hang out and recorded nearly 885 hours of observations. They observed nothing.

Then, the researchers brought 15 of the wild birds into a temporary aviary on the ground and plied them with fruit to see what happened.

It was the sea mango, or Wawai fruit (Cerbera manghas), that revealed all. This fruit is deadly to humans, but Goffins are known to enjoy its seeds. Extracting these seeds is no mean feat, though. They’re encased in a thinnish layer of pulp, and a tough endocarp that is difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate, even for a cockatoo’s sharp beak.

“We have seen cockatoos working for days to open young coconuts. The focus of our interest was on food sources that require rather complex methods of extracting the feed. We have now struck gold with seeds that are enclosed in fruit stones,” said comparative psychologist Berenika Mioduszewska of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.

“It is particularly impressive that the parrots perform such masterful feats with unbelievable skill and great precision.”

Only two of the 15 Goffins shaped tools, using their beaks and tongues to shape them out of tree branches, but those that did were rewarded with the delicious Wawai seeds. The researchers collected the discarded tools and performed 3D analyses to figure out how they were used.

The first was a thicker wedge, inserted into the seed to pry it apart. The second was a sharper tool, a bit like a knife, to cut and penetrate the protective coating around the seed. Finally, the clever cockatoos fashioned spoons, with which they scooped out their hard-won delicacy: the seed itself.

Although the birds crafted these tools in an aviary, the team believes that there are three very good reasons to believe that the Goffins make tools in the wild, too.

First, their readiness and proficiency in tool-making suggested it was a honed skill. Second, video evidence did capture a wild Goffin combining a wooden fragment with a Wawai fruit. Finally, discarded Wawai fruit around the Goffins’ habitat showed evidence of tool use, with one fruit found still with a wooden tool stuck in it.

“Said behavior is carried out quickly and dynamically, and it also seems quite inconspicuous, which is why it is almost impossible to observe it in the dense canopy. We had the unique opportunity to make detailed, close-up observations as we kept a group of wild cockatoos in an aviary for a short period of time,” O’Hara said.

“After several years of project planning and hard physical work, it was ultimately a stroke of luck to discover this behavior in Goffin’s cockatoos.”

Interestingly, the fact that only two of the birds turned to tool use to access the Wawai fruit is also telling. It suggests that Goffin tool use isn’t genetic but rather a skill that individuals can learn. This means that it can be driven by opportunism and individual aptitude and preference.

The finding opens several avenues for understanding Goffin intelligence and tool use. We can study them more in the wild to see what influences the birds’ decisions to learn to use tools or not, and we can also study them in captive settings to better understand the effects of captivity bias.

“The presence of flexible tool use in wild parrots,” the researchers conclude, “strongly suggests a case of convergent emergence of sophisticated tool behavior and refines the phylogenetic landscape of technological evolution.”

The research has been published in Current Biology.

#Nature

[scienceatlas]

Scientific Study Has Finally Observed These Crafty Cockatoos Making 'Cutlery' within the Wild

Scientific Study Has Finally Observed These Crafty Cockatoos Making ‘Cutlery’ within the Wild

Goffin’s cockatoos, so skilled at toolmaking inside a laboratory setting, have finally shown their engineering chops within the wild. Within their natural habitat around the Tanimbar Islands in Maluku, Indonesia, scientists have recently observed the wild birds (Cacatua goffiniana) making tools which help them gain better use of food.   The outcomes show the prior behavior wasn’t just captivity…

[satumaluku]

BKSDA Maluku Terima Kakatua Seram dan Kakatua Tanimbar di Pelabuhan Slamet Riyadi Ambon

BKSDA Maluku Terima Kakatua Seram dan Kakatua Tanimbar di Pelabuhan Slamet Riyadi Ambon

satumalukuID – Sebanyak 10 ekor burung Kakatua Seram (Cacatua moluccensis) dan enam Kakatua Tanimbar (Cacatua Goffiniana) diterima Balai Konservasi Sumber Daya Alam (BKSDA) Maluku dari Pusat Penyelamatan Satwa (PPS) Tasitoki, Bitung, Sulawesi Utara. Penyerahan satwa dilakukan di Pelabuhan Laut Slamet Riyadi Ambon, Rabu (4/12/2019).

Kepala BKSDA Maluku Mukhtar Amin Ahmadi menyatakan, penyerahan…

[viralpearl-blog]

Cockatoos adjust size, but not width, when making their cardboard tools -- ScienceDaily

Cockatoos adjust size, but not width, when making their cardboard tools — ScienceDaily

Goffin’s cockatoos can tear cardboard into lengthy strips as tools to succeed in meals — but fail to adjust strip width to suit by way of slender openings, in response to a research revealed November 7, 2018 within the open-access journal PLOS ONE by A.M.I. Auersperg from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues.

The Goffin’s cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana) is a kind of parrot.…

[ruzilla]

Какаду Гоффина выклевали палочки из картонки и использовали их в быту

Австрийские орнитологи выяснили, что какаду Гоффина (Cacatua goffiniana) могут не только создавать инструменты, н�� и адаптировать их для решения разных задач.

[fullfrontalbirds]

Tanimbar Corella (Cacatua goffiniana)

© Keng Keok Neo

[fumpkins]

Wild cockatoos make their own cutlery sets | Science

Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) are so smart they’ve been compared to 3-year-old humans. But what 3-year-old has made their own cutlery set? Scientists have observed wild cockatoos, members of the parrot family, crafting the equivalent of a crowbar, an ice pick, and a spoon to pry open one of their favorite fruits. This is the first time any bird species has been seen creating and using a set of tools in a specific order—a cognitively challenging behavior previously known only in humans, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys.

The work “supports the idea that parrots have a general [type of] intelligence that allows them to innovate creative solutions to the problems they run into in nature,” says Alex Taylor, a biologist who studies New Caledonian crows at the University of Auckland. “[It] establishes this species as one of the avian family’s most proficient wild tool users.”

The discovery happened serendipitously when behavioral ecologist Mark O’Hara was working with wild but captive birds in a research aviary on Yamdena Island in Indonesia. “I’d just turned away, and when I looked back, one of the birds was making and using tools,” says O’Hara, of the Messerli Research Institute. “I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

The Goffin’s cockatoo is known for being a clever and innovative social learner. In captivity, the birds have solved complex puzzle boxes and invented rakelike tools to retrieve objects. Several other birds, including hyacinth macaws and New Caledonian crows, make and use tools in the wild, often to extract food, but none seems to make a set of tools.

For the new study, O’Hara and his colleagues traveled to this cockatoo’s home on Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands. The birds live high in the tropical forest canopy, making them difficult to observe. The scientists spent almost 900 hours looking up to watch wild cockatoos feed, but didn’t witness tool use.

So, the team captured small flocks of 15 individuals at a time and brought them to their research aviary to study for several months before setting them free. With their strong, curved beaks, Goffin’s cockatoos can feed on many types of fruit. The scientists provided the birds with papayas and young coconuts, but the parrots never fabricated a single tool to help eat those foods. “They were playful and would pick up sticks, and bite off twigs,” O’Hara adds, “but not in any purposeful way.”

Then one day in June 2019, while watching wild cockatoos in the forest, O’Hara noticed fruit on the ground with cockatoo bitemarks. Local team members identified the egg-shaped fruit as that of the sea mango tree, wawai in Tanimbarese. The fruits had recently come into season, and O’Hara gave a handful to the cockatoos in the aviary to see how they would respond. About the size of a small avocado and toxic to humans, the fruits contain a reddish pulp surrounding a hard pit that encases small, nutritious seeds. Getting to those seeds isn’t easy, even for a bird with a knifelike beak.

O’Hara watched in amazement as a male cockatoo bit away the fruit’s skin, then quickly severed a small branch from a tree inside the aviary, and with a series of quick bites whittled its thick stump into a wedge-shaped tool. Holding the fruit with his left foot while perching on his right, he used his tongue to fit the wedge into the pit’s fissure, prying the pit open. Next, he shaped a splinter into a sharp, narrow tool and used this to pierce the parchmentlike interior skin protecting the seeds. Finally, the cockatoo fabricated a third tool from another bit of wood, biting it into a flattened strip that he used to spoon out the seeds (as seen in the video, above), the team reports today in Current Biology.

The scientists provided the flock with a ready supply of the fruits, but only two males made and used the tools—and got to eat the seeds. “If they had a genetic predisposition to use tools, all the birds would do it,” O’Hara says. “Since only a few make these, it’s more likely they invented them independently,” he says, and that they learn to do it from each other in the wild.

Most of the other cockatoos in this flock were younger birds who watched the older birds’ actions with intense curiosity. They even played with the adults’ tools, but perhaps were too young to take on the tasks themselves, O’Hara speculates. “We know they learn socially from each other in captivity,” adds Berenika Mioduszewska, a comparative psychologist who co-led and co-authored the study and is also at the Messerli Research Institute, “so it is likely the same in the wild.”

Since making this discovery, the scientists have found cockatoo tool marks on wawai fruits in the wild, and even retrieved one fruit with a tool stuck into it. Avian archaeology, anyone?

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2021/09/01/wild-cockatoos-make-their-own-cutlery-sets-science/

[birbresearch-blog]

Goffin’s Cockatoo: learning and problem solving

Goffin’s Cockatoo: learning and problem solving

Today’s research is out of the University of Vienna, conducted by Auersperg, Kacelnik, and von Bayern in 2013. In this study, the researchers sought to test the problem-solving abilities of the Goffin’s cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana). Ten birds were individually confronted with a wooden box containing a reward (one-quarter of a cashew), which was visible through an acrylic window. Before the…