Sydney’s crafty cockatoos master suburban bin diving

Study in the journal Science says the gregarious birds mostly learned new behaviours by observing their peers.

A few years ago, a Sydney scientist with the Australia Museum noticed a sulphur-crested cockatoo opening his rubbish bin. Not every resident would be thrilled but ornithologist Richard Major was impressed by the ingenuity. It is quite a feat for a bird to grasp a bin’s flip lid with its beak, prise it open, then shuffle far enough along the edge of the container so that the lid falls backwards, revealing the edible treasures inside. Intrigued, Major teamed up with researchers in Germany to study how many cockatoos had learned the trick.