Bird Brained: Cockatoos Know What Hidden Things Occur Behind Barriers

Birds are smarter than you might think, and scientists now have further proof. They've discovered that cockatoos have similar ability levels to four-year-old human children and apes when it comes to object permanence. The findings show exactly how intelligent these parrots really are.

Cockatoos are known for their smarts. In fact, previous studies have shown how these birds can figure out how to pick a series of "locks" in order to obtain a treat. With the ability to use their feet like hands and manipulate tools, it's not surprising that these birds also have other cognitive abilities. That's why scientists decided to test their spatial memory and tracking.

There are a number of setups to test object permanence abilities. A traditional method is to place a food reward beneath a small cup behind one or more bigger screens. The contents are shown in between visits; if the cup is empty, we know that the reward must be behind the last screen visited.

Another method is called a "transposition task." This is when a reward is hidden underneath one of several cups, which are interchanged one or more times. There are also "rotation" tasks which involve several equal cups. One of these cups has a reward, and all of the cups are aligned in parallel on a rotatable platform that is then turned at different angles. The final type of method includes "translocation" tasks. It's similar to the rotation tasks, except that the cups are not rotated. Instead, the test animal is carried around the arrangement and released at different angles to the cup alignment.

In order to see how birds could match up to these tasks, the researchers tested eight Goffin cockatoos. They put these parrots through a series of trials, including derivations of spatial transposition, rotation and translocation tasks.

"The majority of our eight birds readily and spontaneously solved transposition, rotation and translocation tasks whereas only two out of eight chose immediately and reliably the correct location in the original Piagetian invisible displacement task in which a smaller cup is visiting two of three bigger screens," said Birgit Szabo, one of the researchers, in a news release.

In fact, the scientists found that the cockatoos had little complications with rotation and translocation tasks. While the birds excelled in some areas, though, they fell short in a few others.

"Interestingly and just opposite to human toddlers, our cockatoos had more problems solving the Piagetian invisible displacements than the transposition task with which children struggle until the age of four," said Alice Auersperg, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Transpositions are highly demanding in terms of attention since two occluding objects are moved simultaneously. Nevertheless, in contrast to apes, which find single swaps easier than double, the cockatoos perform equally in both conditions."

The findings show exactly how these cockatoos match up to both apes and humans. In addition, it shows that these creatures are smarter than you might expect, performing better than apes and humans in some tasks.

The findings are published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.