This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Sulfur-crested cockatoos are surprisingly smart. In Australian cities such as Brisbane and Sydney, they've learned how to turn on drinking fountains by twisting the handle with their feet.
In Sydney, they're even able to lift the lids of municipal garbage cans to get to the leftover food scraps inside. However, when the birds do this, they scatter garbage and regularly create a real mess. That's why local residents have started securing their garbage cans: They place weights on the lids to weigh them down or use sticks to jam the hinges.
But the cockatoos, which can grow up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall, often manage to overcome even these new obstacles and open the garbage cans. They can pass on these skills to fellow members of their own flock and to neighboring cockatoo communities. Although this battle of the garbage cans may be annoying for residents, it's very useful for researchers like Lucy Aplin, an evolutionary biologist at UZH: This scenario offers her the perfect place to start studying the social learning behavior of these birds.
Cockatoos belong to the parrot family, one of the most intelligent animal families on the planet. Parrots, for example, are able to learn new sounds throughout their lives, a skill that otherwise only whales, dolphins, crows and humans possess. This talent is one reason some parrot species are able to mimic human speech in a deceptively realistic way.
Within the parrot family, sulfur-crested cockatoos are among the brightest. But one thing's for sure: "Intelligence on its own is not enough for a new skill to spread within a species," Aplin says. Research already tells us that a certain degree of behavioral flexibility is also required—as well as a social network so information that has been gleaned is passed from one individual to the next and continues to exist for a long period of time, Aplin explains.
In short, "It needs a culture." In early summer 2026, the evolutionary biologist is in Sydney with her research team to study sulfur-crested cockatoos in the city. Among other things, the team is conducting experiments with the animals at the Royal Botanic Garden near the Sydney Opera House. From there, Aplin sends a video showing her latest experiment, featuring a cockatoo flying to an octagonal plexiglass container about half a meter (1.6 feet) in diameter.
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