Latest news with #Klump
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Wild cockatoos are learning how to use water fountains
Animals constantly adapt to their environments, but keeping up with humanity's dramatic influence on the natural world poses unique challenges. While this unfortunately ends in disaster for many species, some populations are figuring out new ways to navigate urban spaces. Back in 2022, wildlife biologists confirmed that a community of wild, sulfur-crested cockatoos in Sydney, Australia had learned how to open the lids of curbside trash bins on garbage day in order to snack on locals' leftovers. But that's not all these birds can do. A similar group of Australian 'cockies' are also figuring out the mechanics of drinking fountains in public parks. This isn't simply pressing a button to get a drink, either. The local park's fountain design requires constant pressure to enable water flow from the tap necessitating the use of both feet. The latest behavioral discoveries were recently documented in the journal Biology Letters. 'Overall, these observations showed that individuals operated the drinking fountain using coordinated action with both feet, with one (most often the right) foot on the twist-handle (valve) and one foot gripping the rubber spout (bubbler) or both feet on the valve,' the team wrote in their paper. 'The weight of the bird would then be lowered to turn the twist-handle clockwise and keep it from springing back and the head turned to access the flowing water.' As New Atlas explained on June 4, the study developed after lead author Barbara Klump at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior witnessed the behavior firsthand. Klump wondered how often the cockatoos engaged in the adaptation, and enlisted collaborators from Western Sydney University, the Australian National University, and the University of Vienna to help investigate. After identifying the fountains that the birds stopped at most frequently (as evidenced by beak bitemarks on their plastic outlets), the team installed cameras nearby to monitor the hotspots. Next, they flagged 24 regularly visiting cockatoos and marked them with temporary red dots. The team then stepped back and watched the park's birds do their thing. After 44 total days of recording, Klump's team observed that the cockatoos attempted to use the drinking fountains 525 times over at least the last two years. These attempts weren't surefire ways to receive water, however. While the cockatoos showcased multiple strategies when trying to use the fountains, the most common moves that led to both success and failure were virtually identical. Approximately 41 percent of the birds successfully utilized the fountains. That said, the regulars marked with the red paint evidently learned a bit better through trial and error, achieving their goal about 52 percent of the time. Interestingly, the team's previous study on the garbage bin-opening cockatoos indicated a nearly identical success rate in their marked birds. The team theorizes this suggests parallels between either the physical difficulty of both tasks, or the time it takes to learn the behavior. Researchers also noticed another fascinating detail after they compared their previous observations on the garbage bin-opening cockatoos with their water fountain brethren. 'In contrast… where the bin-opening was heavily biased towards males, we observed no sex bias in attempts to use, or success at, the drinking fountain,' they wrote in the study. 'This might suggest that innovativeness per se does not vary between sexes, but rather is the result of an extrinsic difference between the resources.' The study's authors suggest bin lids might necessitate more physical strength from the birds, thus requiring 'modifying the cost-reward trade-off for smaller females.' Another possibility is that competition for the limited garbage resources may lead to favoring dominant males, whereas an essentially endless water supply allows more equal access for all the birds. Regardless, the researchers believe both the fountain and trashcan adaptations illustrate how innovation may be a 'key mechanism' for certain parrot species to continue adapting in the face of human-induced change. Given how clever they have already proven to be, these likely won't be the last adaptations we see from them.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
A clever cockatoo picked up a human skill—and then it spread
Australia's sulphur-crested cockatoos are bringing a new meaning to the term 'bird-brained,' one innovation at a time. A few years ago, it was opening garbage bins to find food, a practice birds across dozens of neighborhoods eventually adopted. But now, the social birds are lining up, waiting their turns, and drinking straight from water fountains in a Sydney park. And, according to researchers, it's just the latest evidence of cockatoo 'culture.' 'These birds, they constantly surprise me,' says Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and lead author on a study of the new behavior in this week's Biology Letters. The feat may sound simple to a human. After all, even preschoolers can master water fountains. But these particular fountains require fine motor skills. Picture a tall pipe with a round knob and a rubber spout on top. For water to emerge from the top of the bubbler, the knob must be turned and have continuous pressure. For two-foot-tall birds with no thumbs, that means a complicated dance involving talons, bills, and shifting weight.'Imagine that you don't have fingers and that you have a foot and a beak,' says Louis Lefebvre, an emeritus professor of biology and avian researcher at McGill University in Montreal. 'Whenever we talk about tool use in birds, we have to remember how improperly attired they are towards this kind of behavior, how clumsy they are. So it's all the more amazing when birds can do these complicated things.' That's why, even though Klump has studied innovations in these cockatoos for years, she took note when she saw a line of the birds waiting their turn on a chain-link fence, hopping onto the fountain, and twisting the knob. After over a month of observation, the team found that only about 40 percent of the birds that tried to use the fountain were successful, but many more had attempted to—around 70 percent of all the birds they is compared to just 32 percent of observed cockatoos attempting to open trash bins in Klump's 2021 study—the first evidence that parrots could learn from each other's behavior. In that case, the behavior spread to new neighborhoods, from just three suburbs to 44 across southern Sydney. (Read more about the cockatoos' trash behavior.)But here, there was no significant spread of the behavior during the study, suggesting the birds had already learned from their pecking peers by the time Klump's team started observing them. The researchers can't be certain how the behavior began, but the birds may have picked up the knowledge that water could be obtained from the fountain from watching humans or other curious cockatoos. Sulphur-crested cockatoos aren't the first species that has shown the ability to learn from each other, a phenomenon called social learning once thought to be exclusive to humans. They aren't even the first birds to come up with novel approaches to access water. In California's Death Valley, for example, a raven was observed turning on a water faucet, and in Ghana pied crows turned condensed water on air conditioner units into a drinking connection between these adept avians lies in their bird brains. 'A cockatoo has more neurons per cubic millimeter in the equivalent of its cortex than many monkeys,' Lefebvre says. From chimpanzees to crows, animals that can innovate tend to have more neurons. Some have argued that such innovations and social learning constitute a form of culture. (Palm cockatoos use tools to make sweet, sweet music.) Although cockatoos regularly interact with members of neighboring roosts, a key way for behaviors to spread, so far, it seems that other roosts haven't yet learned from these bubbler-loving birds. The researchers aren't sure why, although it might be because many of the surrounding water fountains in Sydney don't use the same mechanisms as the ones in the park. Still, through citizen science reports, researchers have already heard of separate cockatoos using water fountains in other parts of the country over 500 miles away. 'Just last week, somebody contacted me from Brisbane,' says Lucy Aplin, a cognitive ecologist at Australian National University and co-author of the study. 'Reporting that in a park there, the birds have started to open the drinking fountains, and they're of a different design as well.' With Australian population numbers expected to increase by 12 percent over the next decade, urban areas will likely grow, and adapting to these rapidly changing environments can do much more than provide a refreshing sip of water—it can save entire species. 'Innovation provides resilience against threats that can lead to extinction,' Lefebvre city authorities and residents will respond to the birds' drinking habits as they did in the so-called 'battle of the bins' in 2021 remains to be seen, although there are no guarantees the cockatoos won't find innovations to use new bird-proof water fountains. 'These birds are very resilient, and they're very adaptable,' Aplin says. 'I'm prepared to be surprised.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Community Heroes: Buffalo Disaster Relief flipping former motel to house flood victims
UNICOI, Tenn. (WJHL) — A couple is giving a run-down former motel new life while helping those who lost their homes in the flood. They are from middle Tennessee but moved here after Hurricane Helene. Melanie Klump and her husband bought the motel and are turning it into a space where displaced people from the hurricane can live while they figure out their next step. They plan to use the facility to help flood victims–and others in the future. It was once a motel with a high crime rate. Now, the former Budget Inn is getting a facelift thanks to the Klumps and the folks with Buffalo Disaster Relief. 'So [the] main goal right now is getting the displaced, whether or not they come from North Carolina from Virginia, from South Carolina, from Tennessee,' Klump said. 'However, we need to get these people stability'. The Klumps have gutted each room, and are ready to implement the next step in the process. 'We have volunteers that are on standby. We have contractors that are on standby. We have been making sure that we are following everything to a tee to make sure that we go through the fire marshal and get their approval first we get our proper building permits.' The group needs donations, skilled workers and volunteers for demolition and utility installation. 'We need them to understand that this is going to open up 69 doors for people. So it's not about us or Buffalo Disaster or anything, it's about the displaced, it's about the people that are living in campers or living in tents that don't have a home to go to.' Klump says her long-term plans for the building will shift to another population in need after flood recovery has dwindled: Veterans. 'The long-term goal is to get these guys, educate them get them stable, get them into permanent housing,' she said. 'And then from there, we are we've been reaching out to the Veterans Association to see what we can do. Long-term goal, there's always going to be a crisis in the need. But the first and foremost is the hurricane.' It's a commitment to an area hard-hit by the hurricane that will have a lasting impact. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
