Sydney Cockatoos Develop Bin-Opening Culture Through Social Learning, Adapting to Urban Environment
Sulphur-crested cockatoos in Sydney, Australia, have developed a complex behavior of opening household wheelie bins to access discarded food. This behavior, which involves gripping the lid with their beak, raising it, repositioning, and shuffling along the rim to flip it open, was reported in only three Sydney suburbs before 2018. By late 2019, the behavior had spread to 44 suburbs, primarily moving into neighboring areas. A 2021 paper in Science concluded that social learning, rather than genetic inheritance, was the primary driver of this spread, accounting for the behavior reaching 93.9% of the affected suburbs. Researchers observed that birds in different locations developed distinct techniques for opening bins, indicating the formation of local foraging cultures. The study involved online surveys with 1,322 participants providing 1,396 reports across 478 suburbs, and direct observations of marked cockatoos to analyze their methods. 
