Bruce the kea is missing his upper beak. This makes the olive green parrot look a little like he’s always surprised. But scientists are even more shocked at what he can do in spite of his injury.
Bruce has been missing the upper part of his beak since at least 2012. That’s when he was rescued as a fledgling. This young bird, just at the age he was learning to fly, went to live at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch. That’s in southern New Zealand.
Long, sharp beaks help keas rip plant roots out of the ground and pry insects out of rotten logs. Bruce’s injured beak means he couldn’t forage on his own. Bruce also shouldn’t be able to keep his feathers clean. Normally these birds use their beaks to preen. But zookeepers noticed that Bruce had figured out how to preen by using small stones.
First, he looks for his tool among pointy pebbles. He then rolls a few rocks around in his mouth with his tongue until he finds one that he likes. He holds the chosen pebble between his tongue and lower beak to then pick through his feathers.
This behavior didn’t come from the wild. When Bruce arrived at Willowbank, he was too young to have learned how to preen. And no other bird in the aviary uses pebbles this way. “It seems like he just innovated this tool use for himself,” says Amalia Bastos. Now at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., she researches how animals perceive the world.
Tool use is just one of parrots’ many talents. The birds are famous for imitating — and perhaps even understanding — human speech. Some parrot species can solve complex puzzles, such as opening a latched trash bin. Others can practice self-control. Such abilities match those seen in some primates.
These traits make the birds seem quite smart. But defining intelligence is tricky, especially in species other than humans.
So researchers often rely on behaviors that show signs of gaining and using knowledge. Such signs can include planning, memory and problem-solving. Others include learning, attention and maneuvering objects.
Researchers once thought these features made humans special. But some other species also show these talents, such as chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. So do parrots, as well as members of the crow family.
Even so, parrots may not be an obvious choice for studying human-like smarts. Birds and people last shared a common ancestor more than 300 million years ago.
Parrots’ bodies are very different than ours. Their brains also look quite simple compared to ours. But studies over the last 10 years are highlighting the hidden powers of bird brains. And those powers — along with their way with words — suggest parrots may be able to teach us about how what we think of as intelligence can emerge.
A wide skill set
Irene Pepperberg has long suspected that parrots can tell us a lot about ourselves. She studies parrot intelligence at Boston University in Massachusetts.
In the 1970s, Pepperberg started working with Alex, an African gray parrot. By the time he died in 2007, Alex had become famous for a large vocabulary and his knowledge of shapes, colors — even math.
Parrots’ ability to speak words is perhaps their best-known talent. African grays are especially good at picking up words and speaking clearly, Pepperberg says.
One 2022 study found these parrots can repeat up to 600 different words. Although some just mimic people, others can learn to communicate. Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words.
A talking parrot can’t tell you what it thinks or why it behaves some way, Pepperberg notes. “But because you can [train them to communicate], you can ask them the same types of questions that you ask young children.”
To test their smarts, Pepperberg might ask her birds to count objects. Other times, they may be tasked with picking the larger of two objects. Pepperberg’s parrots have also learned to make requests. One of her African grays, for instance, can ask for time alone by saying, “Wanna go back.”
Other clues to how birds think come from how they use objects.
Hyacinth macaws crack open nuts using tools. They hold pieces of wood in their beak or foot to keep the food in just the right position. Palm cockatoos craft drumsticks and rock out to attract mates. Goffin’s cockatoos can recognize individual tools as being part of a set, something only humans and chimps are also known to do.
Overall, studies have documented 11 of the nearly 400 parrot species using tools. By scouring YouTube videos, Bastos and her team noted tool use by 17 more species. They plotted these 28 known parrot tool-users onto an evolutionary tree. Based on this work, the team estimates that 11 to 17 percent of parrot species may use tools.