National Geographic

120 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • FEBRUARY 2018Decision-Making=HEUDƃQFKHVIRXQGDFURVV$XVWUDOLDIRUPWLJKWSDLUVDQGXQOLNHPRVWELUGVUDUHO\VWUD\7RƃQGRXWLIVXFKERQGHGSDLUVFDQFRRUGLQDWHWKHLUEHKDYLRUVDQGMRLQWO\VROYHSUREOHPVUHVHDUFKHUVDWWKH8QLYHUVLW\RI:\RPLQJGHYLVHGDVSHFLDOPD]HWHVW(DFKELUGLQWKLVSDLUWKHPDOHLVSHUFKHGLQWKHKHDUWRSHQLQJKDVEHHQWUDLQHGRQDVHSDUDWHSDUWRIWKHPD]H&DQWKH\FRPELQHWKHLUNQRZOHGJHWRVROYHWKHWDVN"7KHUHVXOWVRIWKHWHVWDUHGXHRXWODWHUWKLV\HDUPHOTOGRAPHED AT THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR AND COGNITION LAB, DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY ANDPHYSIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF WYOMINGpizza. All the pieces are there, but they’re notstacked.” More recently other researchers dis-covered that the wiring that underlies long-termmemory and decision-making is very similar inavian and mammalian brains.Since then a steady stream of studies from thelab and in the wild has revealed just how brightbirds are: Japanese tits, small East Asian song-birds, use their high-pitched pi-pi alarm calls toalert their fellows to predators, and have a kindof grammar, with syntactical rules for combiningthe pi notes with dee-dee-dee notes to summonthe flock to drive off a predator. Green-rumpedparrotlets in South America have calls that func-tion as names. Parent parrotlets apparently assignthe names to their chicks, much the way humanparents give names to their children.Male palm cockatoos on New Guinea courtfemales with their calls and by fashioning drum-sticks from twigs and seedpods and performingrhythmic drum solos on hollow trees—the firstanimal known to make a musical instrument.Curiously, Goffin’s cockatoos, white parrots fromIndonesia, make and use tools in captivity butaren’t known to do so in the wild. “They reallylike new things and things they can manipulate,like zippers, locks, and shirt buttons,” said AliceAuersperg, standing in her barn-size aviary inAustria while 14 hand-raised cockatoos flappedand whirled overhead. “They’re like little, fo-cused engineers.”Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the Univer-sity of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, had calledher birds over to show me how clever they are atopening locks and inventing tools. She want-ed one particular cockatoo, Muppet, but all 14shoved their way into the test room.“Ohhh,” Auersperg sighed. “Some people haveproblems getting their birds to go into testing ar-eas. I have problems keeping them out. They allwant to do the tests.” She picked up a long stickand gently poked at the cockatoos, encouragingthem to return to the main aviary. “You haveto have the personality of a strict kindergartenteacher to work with them,” she said. “You mustbe consistent and firm, because they’re alwaystrying to take advantage.”Auersperg finally got all the birds exceptMuppet to leave the room. With hand signals,she asked Muppet to fly to the testing platformand wait, explaining that the birds can be taughtcommands such as “come,” “go,” and “stay” aseasily as a dog. She placed a puzzle box con-taining a cashew nut on the platform. We—andMuppet— could glimpse the nut through a win-dow in the box’s door, but the door couldn’t beopened until five locks were removed: a pin,a screw, a bolt, a wheel, and a bar. Each lockjammed access to the next lock, so they had to beopened in a specific sequence. Ten of the cocka-toos had opened at least some of the locks, andMuppet and four others had succeeded in gettingthe nut. All worked persistently at the problem,sometimes solving it after a two-hour effort—asign of their sophisticated cognition.For this test, which was designed to see howflexible their minds are, Auersperg had removedthe screw—the second lock in the series. Would