![]() A pet Goffin’s needs a steady supply of toys and appropriate items to chew and destroy. A Goffin’s might be smaller than other cockatoos but this little ‘too is quite active and needs a spacious cage to climb about. A Goffin’s cockatoo needs a well-constructed cage to not only prevent it from escaping but to prevent the bird from destroying it. Studying the abilities of non-primates to use compound tools might reveal the most important criteria for the evolution of tool use, as the brainpower to use them would have needed to evolve completely independently from primates, Beck said. They found that while some birds could emulate what they saw, they had an easier time figuring the solution out for themselves. A follow-up experiment tested whether Goffin's cockatoos could learn to solve the golf test through observation. Yet human children are masters at a skill that cockatoos struggle with - imitating others. "In fact, children under 8 can really struggle to solve problems that cockatoos can master." "We've got these individuals who can use a lot of tools but maybe aren't so good at innovating compared to the opportunity perhaps are doing lots of problem- solving for themselves," Beck told Live Science. Children are surrounded by tools, but Beck said, human children often have trouble innovating with them. Most children, by the age of 7 or 8, are using tools by the dozens. Sarah Beck, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham in England and one of the study's authors, is interested in how animal models like the Goffin's cockatoo can shed light on human tool use, especially in children. "One of the birds operated the stick while holding it between the mandibles, one between the beak tip and tongue, and one with his claw, similar to a primate," he said. In Osuna-Mascaró's words, "he cheated."Īccording to Osuna-Mascaró, the most amazing aspect was each bird's unique approach to solving the problem. He figured out a way to fashion a tool that could directly collapse the platform without playing the golf game. His second try revealed some "outside the box" thinking, however. Figaro was the only bird in the experiment to solve the golf club task on his first try. The cockatoo, in order to receive a treat from the box, would have to place a ball onto the green and then "putt" that ball onto a collapsible platform that held a nut.įive out of 11 of the birds figured out how to successfully retrieve the treat at least once. The experiment involved a box with a small "putting green" on the inside. Goffin's cockatoos have no problem sweeping objects with a single stick, but whether they could combine the stick and ball into one tool was an open question. Golf, after all, involves combining the use of a stick and a ball to reach a common goal of getting a treat. The Goffin lab is next to a golf course, which provided the inspiration for the experiment, Osuna-Mascaró told Live Science. ![]() "I didn't want to test their bodily limitations," said Osuna-Mascaró, "but instead their limitations cognitively." ![]() ![]() This means that he couldn't simply put the birds through tests designed for primates, many of which also have opposable thumbs. ![]() Most composite tool-using species are primates, which have hands for easily fashioning tools. One of Auersperg's colleagues, Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, from the University of Veterinary Medicine, in Vienna had been interested in studying compound tool use in Goffin's cockatoos, but he faced several challenges when it came to designing the right experiment. The use of compound tools is considered a more difficult cognitive process. However, these examples involved single tools, like a stick or a rock. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |