Clever Cockatoos Have Figured Out How to Drink From Water Fountains
Most birds go for ease when looking for drinking water. But the sulfur-crested cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, often prefer to quench their thirst with a challenging puzzle.
In the city's western suburbs, some of the birds have figured out how to use public drinking fountains. The mohawked parrots deftly use one foot to twist the handle open while their other claw grips the spout.
It's unclear why the cockatoos go to the effort of using drinking fountains when there are plenty of accessible water sources nearby. They don't seem to use them more often during hot weather.
One possible explanation is that the task of operating the fountains is simply more fun than sipping water from the local creeks.
'If there is no super urgent need and you're not dying of thirst, then why not do something you enjoy?' said Barbara C. Klump, an author of a study of the birds published on Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, and a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
It's not the first time cockatoos in this area of Australia have been seen cleverly manipulating urban objects for their own benefit. Dr. Klump and her colleagues have also tracked the birds flipping open garbage bins across greater Sydney, a socially learned behavior that has resulted in an arms race (or maybe a wing race) with human residents.
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