Aussie cockatoos use their beaks and claws to turn on water fountains

On a hot day, a few glugs from a park drinking fountain can be a major relief — and some of Sydney’s cockatoos agree.

The brainy city-dwelling parrots have figured out how to twist on drinking fountains for a sip, researchers report June 4 in Biology Letters. 

Lucy Aplin — a cognitive ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra — and her colleagues had been studying sulfur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) and their relationship with the urban environment. In September 2018, Barbara Klump — a behavioral ecologist now at the University of Vienna — was collecting data on cockatoos’ foraging patterns at a mixed-use park in western Sydney and saw the birds using a drinking fountain. After a survey of more local drinking fountains and park rangers confirming that this was something the parrots regularly did, the researchers set up cameras near a fountain in Charlie Bali Reserve to record the behavior.