Not so bird-brained after all! Disabled parrot who lost the top half of his beak in a suspected trap accident is spotted using PEBBLES to preen his features, indicating an impressive level of intelligence

• The kea — Bruce — resides in the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in New Zealand
• He was first spotted using pebbles to preen himself by keepers back in 2019
• University of Auckland researchers observed him over a nine-day period 
• His repeated and consistent use of tools confirms the behaviour is deliberate

A disabled parrot who lost the top half of his beak in a suspected trap accident has been spotted using pebbles and other objects as tools to preen himself.

This resourceful feat — which ‘Bruce’ achieves by holding the items between his tongue and bottom beak — shows an impressive level of intelligence, experts said.

Bruce is a kea, or ‘Nestor notabilis’, who has lived in the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, New Zealand ever since he recovered from his accident.

His behaviour was recorded by experts from the University of Auckland over the course of nine days after being first noticed by keepers at Willowbank back in 2019.

Keas have previously been observed using tools to open boxes but this is the first confirmed report of one using a tool for self care.

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A disabled parrot who lost the top half of his beak in a suspected trap accident has been spotted using pebbles (as pictured) and other objects as tools to preen himself.

This resourceful feat — which ‘Bruce’ achieves by holding the items between his tongue and bottom beak (pictured) — shows an impressive level of intelligence, experts said

BRUCE’S STORY 

Bruce was found with the upper half of his beak missing at Arthur’s Pass, on the South Island, back in 2013.

It is believed that the injury was the result of an accident with a pest trap.

After being nursed back to health at the South Island Wildlife Hospital in Christchurch, he was moved to a large aviary at the Willowbank reserve.

Bruce appears to have adapted well to his injury, and although keepers ensure he has access to plenty of soft food, he has also learned how to eat harder foods by pressing them up against hard objects to break them down. 

The study was conducted by psychologist Amalia Bastos of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and her colleagues.

‘Kea do not regularly display tool use in the wild, so to have an individual innovate tool use in response to his disability shows great flexibility in their intelligence,’ she commented.

‘They’re able to adapt and flexibly solve new problems as they emerge.’

According to the researchers, the fact that Bruce’s use of these objects was consistent and repeated indicates that the behaviour was intentional.

‘The pebbles he picked up were different to those picked up by other kea — they were always of a certain size,’ Ms Bastos explained.

‘This points to an intentional act: to find a way to preen himself without the top half of his beak,’ she added.

When Bruce picked up pebbles, he went on to use them to preen himself 90 per cent of the time — and 95 per cent of the times that he dropped a pebble while preening, he would either retrieve or replace it before continuing his self-care.

Furthermore, not only did the other 12 kea in the aviary never use pebbles or other objects to preen themselves, but when they did pick up objects, they would always select stones of different sizes to those that Bruce chose to preen himself.

Ms Bastos explained that it is important to perform repeated observations of rare behaviours like this, in order to ensure that they are accurately described.

‘This paper also provides a new framework through which we can provide robust evidence for rare behaviours,’ she added.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

MORE BRAINY BIRDS: THE DUCK THAT CAN MIMIC HUMAN SPEECH

Some Australian ducks appear to be able to mimic human speech and other sounds,  including that of doors slamming, a study has concluded.

In a bizarre audio clip, Ripper — a musk duck raised at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, south of Canberra — can be heard seemingly repeating the phrase ‘you bloody fool’.

Researchers from Leiden University and Australia believe that the vocal waterfowl was mimicking a phrase he heard one of his caretakers utter at some point.

Another recording reveals that Ripper can imitate the sound of the door to his aviary being opened and closed. Both imitations were made during his mating displays.

The findings indicate that musk ducks have comparable vocal learning abilities to other mimics like parrots, European starlings, mynah birds and budgerigars.

The study was conducted by biologists Carel ten Cate of Leiden University in the Netherlands and and Peter Fullagar, formerly of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

‘Acquiring vocalisations by learning them from other individuals is only known from a limited number of animal groups,’ the duo wrote in their paper.

‘For birds, oscine and some suboscine songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds demonstrate this ability.’

(Oscines are a group of some 5000-odd bird species, in each of which the syrinx — the vocal organ, analogous to the human larynx — is developed in such a way that allows for the production of diverse and elaborate bird song.)

According to the researchers, Ripper would issue the sounds in a repetitive series — just like the so-called ‘whistle–kick’ which forms part of a regular mating display.

‘The whistle-kick consists of a non-vocal splash component produced by the feet hitting the water, followed by two distinct vocal components: a soft low-frequency sound followed by a much louder whistle,’ the researchers explained.  

The team also reported a case from 2000 of another male musk duck — this one raised by a captive female duck at the Tidbinbilla reserve — being heard to imitate the quacks of Pacific black ducks, also as part of a mating display.

‘The structure of the duck vocalisations indicates a quite sophisticated and flexible control over the vocal production mechanism,’ the researchers concluded.

The observations support the hypothesis that vocal learning in birds evolved in several groups independently rather than evolving once with several losses.’

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

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