Cockatoos learn to work together to find food

Australia’s cockatoos learn how to lift up bin lids to forage for food from each other, rather than because of genetics, according to new research.

The study, published in the journal Science, comes after academics launched a survey across Australia in 2018, which revealed a year later that residents from 44 different areas had reported seeing cockatoos perform the trick.

Dr Barbara Klump, lead co-author, said it indicated the skill had spread “rapidly and wildly” and was learned from “other cockatoos in the vicinity”.

Different opening techniques are also used in different Australian suburbs, which researchers interpreted as “regional subcultures”.