Tenacious ‘Trash Parrots’ [Cockatoos] Locked in Escalating ‘Arms Race’ With Humans Down Under
livescience.com | Harry Baker

Residents in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, are in the midst of an escalating feud with a neighboring population of wild sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) over an unlikely prize: household trash. While this conflict may sound comical, researchers report that it shows all the signs of an “innovation arms race,” in which two species become trapped in a cycle of behavioral changes as they continually try to one-up or outthink one another.

The sharp-witted cockatoos have earned the unflattering nickname “trash parrots” after learning to open up flip-top garbage bins to pillage their contents. In 2018, videos shared online showed the resourceful birds grabbing onto the rims of bin lids with their beaks or feet, shimmying down toward the hinge and eventually flipping the plastic covers entirely off the containers. After watching the footage, researchers investigated the behavior and found that the cockatoos were working out how to open the bins by observing one another, which is known as social learning.

Since then, local residents have deployed numerous countermeasures — including bricks, sticks, locks and even rubber snakes — to prevent the cunning cockatoos from inadvertently covering the streets in trash. However, not all these countermeasures have proven to be effective at outwitting the cockatoos, who continue to outsmart the humans and break into bins where they can.

These countermeasures ranged from simple solutions, such as weighing down the lid with bricks or water bottles, to more ingenious ideas.