Clever Cockatoos Solve Puzzles set by Prof Alex Kacelnik

NEWS |

Pembroke Fellow in Biology, Professor Alex Kacelnik, has co-authored a new study of cockatoos who have shown themselves capable of multiple lock-picking when trying to reach a food reward.

Prof Kacelnik and his colleagues from Oxford University, the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute have published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE. They found that untrained cockatoos were capable of solving a series of five locks and would keep going through the challenge without being rewarded along the way. The birds' tendency to explore their surroundings using touch and not just visual observation is believed to be an important factor in their success in these trials.

Prof Kacelnik says: "It would be too easy to say that the cockatoos understand the problem, but this claim will only be justified when we can reproduce the details of the animals' response to a large battery of novel physical problems."

This research has attracted some significant attention in the scientific community, see:

BBC Nature website

New Scientist online

Guardian science blog