As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Tuesday 23 August 2016

Two Barbados bird species enter the select club of string-pullers


August 17, 2016

Lesser antillean bird3.jpg
Barbados bullfinch
The Barbados bullfinch and Carib grackle can pass the popular animal cognition test of string-pulling, but this ability may be unrelated to performance on six other cognitive tests, according a study published August 17, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean-Nicolas Audet from McGill University, Canada, and colleagues.

String-pulling is considered one of the most complex problem-solving tasks for animals. While many birds, including several corvids and parrots, are capable of string pulling, the association between string-pulling and cognitive traits has not been fully explored, and most previous studies were carried out using captive birds.

Carib grackle
Audet and colleagues tested the string-pulling ability of wild-caught Carib grackles and Barbados bullfinches by suspending food in a cylindrical container that was attached to a perch using string, which could be reached by a series of coordinated actions. To determine if individual variation in performance could be predicted by results on other tasks, the authors compared the birds' performance on string-pulling to six other behavioral measures, including problem solving, temperament, and learning.

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