Cockatoos: Cracking the code

Cockatoo (Photo by Arpingstone) 

Although cockatoos (which are part of the parrot order) are certainly adept at cracking nuts, they might also be versed in cracking codes.

Elizabeth Barber, in her Christian Science Monitor article "Da Vinci-code, bird-style: Cockatoos can solve complex puzzles,"

reports on research findings from the Goffin Laboratory at Vienna University.  Alice Auersperg and her team there discovered that untrained cockatoos were able to successfully complete a sequential "puzzle" that consisted of the following five steps:  "…remove a pin,

then a screw, then a bolt; then turn a wheel 90 degrees and then a latch sideways…" 

Barber reports that except for work with chimpanzees, "a nonhuman animal successfully completing more than three, completely novel, sequential steps without prior training has not been previously

documented in scientific literature."

Although science might first be recognizing the grandeur of these birds, religion has long acknowledged it.  Wikipedia reports that the "Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped birds and often depicted parrots in their art."  Amitabha, a "celestial buddha" of the Mahayana school, once morphed into a parrot.  The

bodhisattva Guanshiyin is sometimes shown with a parrot ("clasping a pearl or prayer beads in its beak") hovering above her upper right side.  

  

Resources

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0705/Da-Vinci-code-bird-style-Cockatoos-can-solve-complex-puzzles?nav=127-csm_category-topStories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot

Copyright July 9, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved