{"id":28960,"date":"2025-06-03T23:10:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T23:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28960"},"modified":"2025-06-03T23:27:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T23:27:29","slug":"clever-cockatoos-have-figured-out-how-to-drink-from-water-fountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28960","title":{"rendered":"Clever Cockatoos Have Figured Out How to Drink From Water Fountains"},"content":{"rendered":"

They had also learned how to flip open garbage lids in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Scientists wonder what they\u2019ll work out next.<\/p>\n

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A handful of cockatoos in the Syndey suburbs have figured out how to use public drinking fountains, an innovation that more and more of the birds have adopted over the past few years.<\/span>Klump et al., Biology Letters 2025<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Most birds go for ease when looking for drinking water. But the sulfur-crested cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, often prefer to quench their thirst with a challenging puzzle.<\/p>\n

In the city\u2019s western suburbs, some of the birds have figured out how to use public drinking fountains. The mohawked parrots deftly use one foot to twist the handle open while their other claw grips the spout.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear why the cockatoos go to the effort of using drinking fountains when there are plenty of accessible water sources nearby. They don\u2019t seem to use them more often during hot weather.<\/p>\n

One possible explanation is that the task of operating the fountains is simply more fun than sipping water from the local creeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf there is no super urgent need and you\u2019re not dying of thirst, then why not do something you enjoy?\u201d said Barbara C. Klump, an author of a study of the birds published on Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, and a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time cockatoos in this area of Australia have been seen cleverly manipulating urban objects for their own benefit. Dr. Klump and her colleagues have also tracked the birds flipping open garbage bins<\/a> across greater Sydney, a socially learned behavior that has resulted in an arms race<\/a> (or maybe a wing race) with human residents.<\/p>\n

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They had also learned how to flip open garbage lids in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Scientists wonder what they\u2019ll work out next.A handful of cockatoos in the Syndey suburbs have figured out how to use public drinking fountains, an innovation that more and more of the birds have adopted over the past few years.Klump et al., Biology Letters 2025Most birds go for ease when looking for drinking water. But the sulfur-crested cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, often prefer to quench their thirst with a challenging puzzle.In the city\u2019s western suburbs, some of the birds have figured out how to use public drinking fountains. The mohawked parrots deftly use one foot to twist the handle open while their other claw grips the spout.It\u2019s unclear why the cockatoos go to the effort of using drinking fountains when there are plenty of accessible water sources nearby. They don\u2019t seem to use them more often during hot weather.One possible explanation is that the task of operating the fountains is simply more fun than sipping water from the local creeks.\u201cIf there is no super urgent need and you\u2019re not dying of thirst, then why not do something you enjoy?\u201d said Barbara C. Klump, an author of a study of the birds published on Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, and a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.It\u2019s not the first time cockatoos in this area of Australia have been seen cleverly manipulating urban objects for their own benefit. Dr. Klump and her colleagues have also tracked the birds flipping open garbage bins across greater Sydney, a socially learned behavior that has resulted in an arms race (or maybe a wing race) with human residents.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28962,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28960"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28963,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28960\/revisions\/28963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}