Cockatoo bird spikes11/25/2023 Nor does blocking access with heavy objects such as bricks cockatoos use brute force to push them off. Tricks such as attempting to scare the parrots off with rubber snakes don’t work very well, Klump says. Barbara Klump/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior One option people used to try to deter the pesky parrots from getting into the trash was spikes on the top of the bin lid. ![]() Observations coupled with an online survey showed that people living on the same street are more likely to use similar deterrents, and those efforts escalate over time. In the study, Klump and colleagues inspected more than 3,000 bins across four Sydney suburbs where cockatoos invade trash to note whether and how people were protecting their garbage. Or they might learn how to get around it. ![]() With the right method, the cockatoos might fly by and keep hunting for a different target. Researchers are closely watching this escalation to see what the birds - and humans - do next. ![]() That’s when people beef up their efforts, and the cycle continues. “That’s usually a low-level protection and then the cockatoos figure out how to defeat that,” Klump says. When cockatoos learn how to flip trash can lids, people change their behavior, using things like bricks to weigh down lids, to protect their trash from being flung about ( SN Explores: 10/26/21). This interspecies battle could be a case of what’s called an innovation arms race, says Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, Germany.
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