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Wild cockatoos in Western Sydney learn how to drink from water fountains

A team of animal behaviorists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, working with a colleague from Western Sydney University, in Australia, has discovered that wild cockatoos in Australia have figured out how to activate public drinking fountains to get themselves a sip of water.

In their study in the journal Biology Letters, the group set up motion-triggered cameras near a public drinking fountain in a part of Western Sydney and then studied the film of the birds in action.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are a notoriously intelligent type of parrot. In addition to their antics observed by many people around Australia, they have become wildly popular as actors in YouTube videos.

In the wild, they have been observed opening trash bins, removing wipers from car windshields, pulling electrical cables from satellite dishes and making and using tools to help them gain access to food—shaping twigs with their beaks to help them reach Wawai seeds inside its hard shell, for example. In this new effort, the researchers found that cockatoos living in Sydney have also learned to use public drinking fountains.

The kind of fountain involved in the study was a twist-handle type; as their name implies, users twist the handle and hold it to dispense water. To prevent continuous flow when not in use, the handles have resistance, pulling them back to a closed position. For people, the process is quite simple. For birds, it requires more work.

In watching video of the birds in action, the research team found that they turned the handle with their beak and then used the weight of their body and their feet to keep it twisted while they sipped at the water that surged up from the fountain.

In watching multiple videos of the birds, the researchers found that they took turns, with multiple birds sometimes forming a queue. The birds seemed to prefer the water from the fountain over other local sources, such as streams, ponds or backyard feeders.

While there may be an element of fun vs. necessity to this observed behavior, it's possible that the birds also found the water from the fountain to be cleaner, and thus less likely to make them sick. And finally, the researchers noted that the birds had varying levels of skill in working the twist handle, suggesting they were in different stages of the learning process.