Wild parrots in Sydney, Australia have learned to break into protected bins, but people are developing innovative counter-measures.
A major stumbling block to any potential anti-cockatoo trick is that the bins
are designed to open and spill their contents when lifted by the automated arm on garbage trucks, meaning they can’t be kept entirely sealed tight. But that hasn’t stopped people from devising a variety of methods, like putting bricks and stones onto the lids, fastening water bottles to the lid handles with cable ties, or using sticks to block the hinges. There are now even commercially available locks that are supposed to unlatch come collection time .
Unfortunately for the humans, cockatoos have learned how to defeat some of the simpler measures. But much as the birds are adapting, people are developing counters right back. As the researchers put it, the parrots and people of Sydney seem to be engaged in a sort of innovation “arms race,” though Klump balked at describing it as a full-on war.
The entire saga, the researchers say, may be a preview of the sort of increasingly common interactions between people and wildlife that we can expect as we continue to build our cities larger and encroach on wildlife habitats. Some animals, like these parrots, may find new ways to adapt to our presence, yet many others won’t. And sometimes, these interactions can be harmful to humans, such as with the emergence of newWhat exactly will happen next is anyone’s guess.
For their part, the team plans to keep studying the underlying learning mechanisms that led these cockatoos to become proficient trash collectors, and they hope to document how adept they might become at solving the latest countermeasures meant to keep them from their garbage treasure.
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