Self-care tooling innovation in a disabled kea (Nestor notabilis).
Sci Rep
; 11(1): 18035, 2021 09 10.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-34508110
ABSTRACT
Tooling is associated with complex cognitive abilities, occurring most regularly in large-brained mammals and birds. Among birds, self-care tooling is seemingly rare in the wild, despite several anecdotal reports of this behaviour in captive parrots. Here, we show that Bruce, a disabled parrot lacking his top mandible, deliberately uses pebbles to preen himself. Evidence for this behaviour comes from five lines of evidence (i) in over 90% of instances where Bruce picked up a pebble, he then used it to preen; (ii) in 95% of instances where Bruce dropped a pebble, he retrieved this pebble, or replaced it, in order to resume preening; (iii) Bruce selected pebbles of a specific size for preening rather than randomly sampling available pebbles in his environment; (iv) no other kea in his environment used pebbles for preening; and (v) when other individuals did interact with stones, they used stones of different sizes to those Bruce preened with. Our study provides novel and empirical evidence for deliberate self-care tooling in a bird species where tooling is not a species-specific behaviour. It also supports claims that tooling can be innovated based on ecological necessity by species with sufficiently domain-general cognition.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Loros
/
Autocuidado
/
Conducta Animal
Límite:
Animals
País/Región como asunto:
Oceania
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Año:
2021
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Nueva Zelanda