Wild cockatoos learn to drink from water fountain
Every morning and every evening before nestling into nighttime hollows, sulphur-crested cockatoos have been seen taking turns at a drinking fountain in a park in Western Sydney.
One by one, the cockies hop on, grip the tap, use their weight to twist it, and sip the water bubbling up. Some wait below to catch any drips.
The sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) is a species of Aussie parrot known for swinging playfully from powerlines, wielding food with its clawed feet, and communicating with ear-splitting screeches.
But twisting a tap for a drink is newly reported behaviour that’s been described for the first time, in the journal Biology Letters, suggesting far-reaching implications about the ability of this bird species to adapt to urban sprawl.
“When we watch cockatoos doing these sorts of behaviours, we don’t always recognise how complex they are,” Dr Lucy Aplin, an Australian National University behavioural ecologist involved in the discovery, told Australian Geographic.
A cockie ‘tradition’
Dr Aplin’s research is focused on how new knowledge and behaviours arise and then spread through animal societies.
In 2014 she led a team that spotted sulphur-crested cockatoos opening kerbside bins in southern Sydney to feast on food waste. The research mobilised citizen scientists to track this behaviour, discovering that cockies in neighbouring suburbs had watched, learned, and begun flipping open their own local bin lids.
A landmark paper published in 2021 by the team claimed that this “social learning” showed the sulphur-crested cockatoo was capable of culture, joining the ranks of only a few other non-human species including the chimpanzee and humpback whale.
The latest research showing cockies using drinking fountains is another case study adding to those remarkable findings.
Up to 200 cockatoos at the Western Sydney park had been drinking from the water fountain (and supposedly others with suspicious chew marks in the park) for at least two years. The researchers called it the birds’ new local “tradition”.
“This new study demonstrates that bin-opening traditions weren’t a once off,” Dr Aplin said. “We can now compare that to how this new urban innovation of using bubblers emerged and spread through the cockatoo group to adapt to local conditions.”
The researchers watched the birds for 44 days using camera traps, noting 525 attempts at the fountain at dawn and dusk. Manipulating the tap at the fountain wasn’t easy; twisting it open required sophisticated motor skills, and only 46 per cent of the attempts succeeded.
“It might be that those unsuccessful ones are still learning. They use trial and error to copy the behaviour from others and still need to work out the exact action themselves,” Dr Aplin said.
Unlike the bin-opening behaviour, which spread to cockatoos across other suburbs, the drinking fountain innovation hasn’t been seen elsewhere. The researchers speculated that’s because water fountain designs vary, meaning the birds would have to learn from scratch each time they encountered a new one.
“This is a really cool example of how human decision-making at the institution level can determine the animals’ behavioural repertoire,” Dr Aplin said.
Birds quick to adapt
The sulphur-crested cockatoo isn’t the only ingenious Australian native bird species. The rainbow lorikeet is known for ripping open sugar packets at cafes, the black-breasted buzzard cracks open eggs with stones, and the black kite drops embers to purposefully start new fires and flush out food.
Indeed, Australia is home to some particularly smart bird species. Through millions of years of evolution, they’ve endured the continent’s erratic climate and environment. To survive bushfires, droughts, ice ages and floods, they’ve need to be adaptable.
Now, Dr Aplin explained, they’re undergoing one of the biggest habitat transformations in natural history: urbanisation. And the sulphur-crested cockatoo is taking it on the chin (well, beak).
Research from 2011 found the number of sulphur-crested cockatoos in Sydney had risen steadily during the three previous decades. They’d become used to humans and benefited from the planting of fruit trees.
“They give us an optimistic side of urban living. Even when we make decisions that might impact them negatively, they can often rise to that challenge and sometimes even turn it into an opportunity,” Dr Aplin said.“ They’re so good at both innovating and, as we’ve shown, learning from one another to turn those innovations into population change.”
Urban planning
If we’re to safeguard urban wildlife, she said, city councils must take animal behaviour into account when making urban planning choices – even seemingly minor ones about water fountains.
“We can’t only focus on preserving animals in pristine wildernesses anymore; it’s not working. We also need to think about animals in anthropogenic landscapes and how we can create functioning environments there for them as well.”
Yet, the sulphur-crested cockatoo is still heavily reliant upon natural environments. GPS tracking shows the species avoided the most urbanised areas such as the CBD and tended to sleep and nest in parks with old gum trees.
“While they are doing well in urban environments, they still do need remnant habitats,” Dr Aplin said.
So, whether it’s in your backyard, a city park or a towering gum on a nature strip, urban wildlife can thrive if we give it the chance.
