Goffin’s Cockatoos
What if we told you that in spite of our connection to other primate species, the species that would first make advanced toolsets like humans would be cockatoos? You might want to laugh us out of the room, and we wouldn’t blame you. However, this is actually true and we discovered this in the Fall of 2021. Goffin’s Cockatoos were being studied at the Tanimbar Goffin Lab in Indonesia where they keep flocks of 15 in an aviary for a few months at a time to study, then release them back into the wild. In one study, these intelligent birds were given basic foods like papayas and coconuts. Yet they were also given a slightly more challenging mango.
The tough fruit is full of seeds these cockatoos love, but it takes a lot to work for. The scientists watched as these cockatoos made three different types of tools, all used in sequence, to pry open the pit of the fruit. One bird bit off the soft flesh of the fruit before snapping off a small piece of a branch from a nearby tree. It then used its beak to remove the bark and carve down the wood into a wedge shape. The cockatoo pushed it into the pit to open it up. After, it made a sharper, narrower tool to break into the tough skin around the seeds. Then, made a flatter tool to scoop out the seeds. All of this shocked scientists observing for obvious reasons.