S3 #49 How does playing make birds smarter? Brain-to-brain with Prof. Gisela Kaplan.

0:00Hi, and welcome to Kaleidoscience. Here you find answers about cognition that you may or may not have asked yourself. This episode is hosted by Imogen Hüsing and Elisa Palme. So sit back, relax and enjoy this week's episode. Before the episode starts, a short disclaimer. With your technical difficulties, a part of the vacuum game is unfortunately missing. But apart from that, this is one of my favorite episodes and I highly recommend that you listen to it to the end.

0:31One of the favorite stories that my grandfather tells me is when he observed the crows in his garden picking up the walnuts and letting them fall down onto the pavement of the street to get to the nuts. And he always tells it with such a fascination for this problem-solving ability of these animals, which also wrapped up on me.

1:03So I'm really, really excited to have this episode with Professor Gisela Kaplan, who is an emeritus professor in animal behavior in the School of Science and Technology of New England in Australia, who specializes on bird cognition. Her research focus is in vocal learning, communication and cognition of birds and other vertebrates. And during her career, she has published over 20 books, for example, her bestseller, The Australian Magpie,

1:35and her 2016 published book, Bird Minds, Cognition and Behavior of Australian Native Birds, which was awarded with the prestigious Whitley Award. Welcome. And we're really, really glad that you decided to join our interview today. Thank you for having me. And as always, we play our short Get You No Game, where I will give you five sentence beginnings and we'll ask you to answer them as spontaneously as you can.

2:05Our first sentence is, As a kid, I always wanted to be.

2:10I was nine years old and I was asked what I wanted to be. And I said, I want to be a pilot or a surgeon or a professor. And I got literally laughed out of the classroom. So there you are. But I got one of you.

2:32Our second sentence. If I was an emoji, I would be. I don't even know what an emoji is.

2:41A smiley, basically. Oh, yes. Well, I would be very much a smiley face.

2:50It was just about to say, I think emoji is. How do you explain an emoji, Imogen?

2:57These small yellow smiley faces that you can use on your phone for text communication.

3:04Like small, small pictures. Oh, yes. There are various faces I use all the time. Mine was always smiley. I'm a half full glass person. Nice. Always the optimist.

3:20Our next sentence. My favorite thing to do on a day off is? Oh.

3:27Be in the garden. Be at the sea. Do something very relaxing and very pleasant. Preferably with all our animals. That sounds good. Yeah. Do you have animals at home?

3:43We've always had four Rhodesian Ridgebacks. And I work in a volunteer organization and have done so for 30 years to rehabilitate birds that have been orphaned or injured. And I still do that every time and every season. That's amazing.

4:03Could you maybe tell us a bit about how you ended up in the research field you were most active for the past year? So how you ended up in researching birds and bird behavior? Well, to say that is a very valid question because I'd never been around birds much. I'd never studied birds. And I grew up in cities and had only a marginal awareness of birds. So I do understand how many city people react, that birds are very much on the margin of consciousness.

4:39And it really only happened because I joined a wildlife organization. And I had chosen to, you have to specialize right at the beginning of the training when you rehabilitate or raise orphaned animals. That you have to specialize in certain fields. So I chose birds. And that was basically because we had four large dogs, Rhodesian Ridgebacks and kangaroos wouldn't mix very well. So I decided I'm not going to do wildlife rehabilitation and frighten the poor animals out of existence when they see the four dogs.

5:17So at any rate, that started the training in birds at a practical level. And it's amazing how much you need to know, actually, not just food and behavior and how you feed them and so forth, but actually also detect whether they're stressed or hungry or whatever. And it's a very intense involvement because most nestlings you have to feed every 20 minutes. So your day is filled up with that sort of activity.

5:50And if they have an illness, you have to establish that and provide medication and you have to learn how to give them medication. It's not as simple as popping in a pill into the mouth. You know, they have a beak. And when they are in pain, they try to mask it. So birds are very good in masking pain. So you can't actually easily tell whether there's a problem with a bird because they immediately food for somebody else. If somebody else detects this is a weak bird, it's going to be caught and won't have a future.

6:27So anyway, even at that level, it was already quite exciting and a lot of work and a lot of learning to do. But then I stood at the window of the living room and there was a voice suddenly saying to me, I've got dinner for you. And I thought, who? And there was nobody else in the room who said, I've got dinner for you. It was very clear diction. It wasn't slurred or anything or like budgerigars talk, you know, that you really have to listen very carefully to budgerigars before you pick up what the words are.

7:01But the parody, like, but very clearly, I've got dinner for you. And so I looked again and I thought, who was saying that or somebody playing a joke on me? And then the magpie juvenile was outside by that time. She was running freely around in the garden. And I opened the door and she looked at me, that little juvenile, and said, I've got dinner for you. There has been no record ever of magpies being capable of mimicry.

7:35We know it of parrots, of course, and of budgerigars, but not of magpies. It's a songbird and a territorial songbird. So territorial songbirds normally don't develop large song repertoires because what they need to have is a territorial call or sequence of calls to say, this is my territory and don't get too close. But not a large repertoire. The intriguing thing about the Australian magpies is that they have a huge repertoire of song and most beautiful.

8:06It sounds like a synthesizer. It's a very interesting, intriguing sound. And sometimes I can sort of warbly do quiet music for six hours nonstop. I've recorded as many as six hours nonstop for that. A single magpie. A single Australian magpie. A single Australian magpie. And then I got very fascinated by all this and had to record it and had to find out where this, because it was against all the theories of territorial song, what you need song for, why it had such a large repertoire, why it was so beautiful, why the diction was so right.

8:49And it's a sentence I would not have said. I've got dinner for you. In fact, I'm always so busy. I very rarely cook dinner for myself or family. And therefore, that's not a sentence I would have given. So it started a whole line of inquiry and I got so hooked, absolutely hooked on this little bird and discovered it was, it had strong emotions, had ideas of its own.

9:22Wasn't all that different actually from the Rhodesian richback pups we had. And it wanted to play. When I walked out of the house, it started tearing at my, what is it, shoe laces and undid them. And I got so sick of it, I took my shoes off and said, you can have the shoes and play with the shoe laces. And no, it didn't, it didn't want the shoe laces.

9:55It wanted me in the shoes and then attack the shoe laces. So it was clearly play behavior. So that was another dimension I learned about magpies and many other Australian birds. That they play intensively and extensively and have lots of games. And perhaps as a songbird, the magpie is one of the most, has the most developed play repertoire I can think of a songbird, except for the kia, and that's a parrot.

10:28So that's got a very extensive play repertoire, but so has the Australian magpie. So yes, I spent 18 years studying it and I couldn't ever get away from the birds ever again. And of course it widened then to parrots and the question of cognition and how much can we compare that to humans. All of that came into the question. Yes. So amazing.

10:54We will go into play behavior later on because I've never, I knew that, for example, kias have quite extensive play behavior, but I never thought of other birds having play behavior as well. So I'm really looking forward to that part as well. So it's, yeah, it's interesting how just one tiny moment kind of changed, or started an interest. It changed my life and it unleashed a passion for this. I mean, nobody told me to work as madly as I did and out in the bush and started interactions with magpie families.

11:32We had a magpie family as well, and then I thought I'd become very professional. And once the magpie family realized, they actually came close and then walked into the hide, looked through the hide, walked out, and then started demolishing the hide. And they were very angry with me. And I let them demolish the hide, and I took my chair out. I was allowed in the open, any time welcome, but not in a hide.

12:03That was clearly off-limits. That wasn't, that just wasn't done. It was obviously very rude or secretive or whatever it was. They weren't happy with it. And I adjusted my behavior to their requirements or whatever they told me to do, and they told me plenty. See? Yeah, fascinating. There's another incident because I got so close to them. They can become very tame and very friendly. And because they stay in the territory for 25 years or so, or even 30 years, you get to know them very well, and they get to know the household very well.

12:42But I was planting, I had a lovely market garden as well, and I was planting garlic plants out in the morning. And I noticed suddenly after the row, I was pleased with myself. I'd done a whole row at 6 o'clock in the morning because I had a lecture at 8 o'clock. So that was going to be finished. I looked around. There was a magpie. Every time I put a garlic plant in, it pulled the garlic plant out and threw it in a wide angle away from that garden bed. And I thought this is, I gave up, obviously.

13:14And then I thought, well, obviously, I've asked my colleagues in horticulture, I said, well, what does garlic do, a garlic plant do? I said, oh, it repels insects and worms. Ah. So since they are feeding on worms, now, how would they have had the knowledge? It is intriguing, isn't it? How would they have had the knowledge to say, we cannot have garlic plants?

13:45I mean, there are not many people who plant garlic plants. I mean, and they live on the same property. But these are not good for us, and they will deprive us of a valuable food source in your garden. And so they were right. And the worms would disappear, and other insects and underground animals would disappear from the garlic plants. So I took the garlic plants out, and I said, okay, I won't plant them again here.

14:16And I had a huge garden pot, and I prepared that. And the magpie was watching me so closely. And I said, can I plant this in this food planter, please? And I put them in there, and the entire family came and watched me plant it there. And then I said, well, what's, can I do that now? You're not going to pull them all out again. And they looked at it. They walked around the edge of the planter.

14:47Yeah, and the rule of the family was it was okay to leave it there as long as I didn't plant it in the garden. We never had another conflict. Now, again, where do you put this kind of interaction? You know, and I suppose in order to even notice that behavior is that you have an open mind what an animal can do. And you don't dismiss them ahead of time that they are mindless little things.

15:20And, I mean, I know where the mindlessness comes from is because they have very small brains. Even the big birds have only walnut-sized brains. But what we've since found in the research, of course, is that the neurons in the forebrain are packed so densely that the birds actually have brain, the part that is responsible for cognitive development and interpretation of the world, the same number of neurons as chimpanzees.

15:54That's impressive. Wow. So there you are. Yeah. And we could not have accepted that finding, even if somebody said, this is science and I've done every double check and triple check. The point is, I think, that computers were developed. And if I remember rightly, I had a backup just in the 90s that had a backup space of two megabytes. It was a heavy thing, two megabytes.

16:26I thought it was great, you know. And then, of course, this technology developed so quickly. And of late, I was very keen to back up anything I had. So all the 23 books I'd written are backed up on an external hard drive, a small little thing, like a little bar of chocolate. And it's almost humiliating, but 23 books fitted comfortably on that tiny little space. I mean, really, you know, thousands and thousands of pages, thousands of figures and images without any problem.

17:04And once we know that, that memory and information can be stored in compressed form or whatever, in very small spaces, we're more ready to accept that birds can do exactly the same thing in their brains. You see, they have the connections as well and the memory as well, but they do. Thank you so much for the part. You've already touched shortly on brain size of birds.

17:35I was never aware that there are different brain-sized birds. Could you maybe tell us really shortly what big brain means in a bird? Yes, the point is big brain, you see, for any kind of living thing, even invertebrates, if it has a small brain, brain size increases with body size. That's the normal event. But there is a huge difference between mammals and birds because in mammals, brain size increases almost in many cases, relatively proportionate to body size.

18:09But, and at birds it doesn't, it makes a stop at walnut size. And you know how small the heads are, so there is a limited, and the head has to be small for aerodynamic reasons, otherwise it couldn't fly. You can't have a heavy head, they would fall over, wouldn't they? So architecturally that's not possible, so they have to remain small. But if you increase, you see, let's say, let me put it this way, the brain is made up of many different cells, and not all of them are in the forebrain, and not all of them are neurons.

18:48But in the neuron part of the forebrain, which is also our human cognition, those numbers of neurons count. And there is an amazing technique now to actually count the number of neurons in the forebrain. I think it's called an infractionator. I've never used it, but you can actually count the actual number of the billions of the neurons. And I found to their absolute amazement that McCall, for instance, by the way, I'd like to deal with the prejudice immediately.

19:26Most Europeans think that the raven is the most clever bird on earth, right? The whole literature, you can look up every paper, you look up on the internet, the cleverest bird on earth is the raven. It's only because it's European, and there have been a lot of studies made on it. But the ones with the biggest brain, and biggest brain not in size, but biggest brain in number of neuron density in the forebrain, which is responsible for cognitive development, innovative thinking and problem solving and all of that,

20:01is the macaw, the kia, the self-equested cockatoo, and in fourth position, the raven. And Europeans have never conceded the raven in fourth position. It's still in first position. So amongst songbirds, it certainly holds top position. But I'd like to make another correction, which will be interesting for your listeners. All songbirds first evolved in Australia.

20:33Really? So the birds, yes, and it's proven scientifically, it's not my idea, but they migrated when water levels were very low. They started radiating out of Gondwana and what was Gondwana into Australia about 35 million years ago or so. But they are the modern, all modern songbirds are Australian in origin, including the raven.

21:03There are about 40 species of raven. And that is really important to know because I don't know whether you know this incredible event of the mass extinction of 65 million years ago. There was a crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, and it was a big, big event, and it killed all the dinosaurs. It eliminated just about 90% of living things on Earth. So the dinosaurs were gone.

21:35There were no birds in Europe. There were lots of fossil finds, but no birds in Europe, no birds in America, no birds anywhere, only in South America because it was linked to Australia and Gondwana, you see. And after that was over, there are 22 lineages for some reason, and may have been a bit more sheltered, that survived in Australia. And one of the oldest forms is the parrot or citizen species that evolved 95 million years ago and never stopped evolving, 95 million years ago.

22:18And all the modern songbirds and other birds and parrots that you see in the world have a history that are younger than 65 million years ago. So they developed after, there was a huge explosion once things settled down, but completely new vegetation, completely new climate and everything. So 65 million years ago ought to be ingrained in your mind for the greatest explosion and development of mammals and development of birds.

22:53That was the gift of this one meteor, otherwise life would have been very different on Earth. So, yes, even the ravens came over to Europe eventually, but that took about 20 million years, I should imagine. So what it means, and what it means in terms of cognition, we have here examples of the longest continuous evolution of birds. And we can go to the sites where they've been, and we've got the prehistory in plants and rocks and everything and fossil finds to find out how cognition developed, why it developed, because of the massive changes in climate, massive changes in the plants that grew and food they could eat.

23:46And as Charles Darwin said, it's not necessarily the most intelligent one, but the most adaptable one. The one organism that can think of solving a problem, if I can't eat this item that I was used to up to now and it's no longer present, what else could I find or try? And obviously, the powers, particularly the cockatoos, were very successful at it.

24:15I'm just startled by all the information right now. I think you had a question.

24:20Yeah, you already touched on brain size in birds and that it is not the best indicator for intelligence because neurons are just more packed in bird brains than in other species, for example. What are, in your opinion, better measures of intelligence or how would you even define intelligence? Well, the point is we've never called it intelligence for the one, mind you, this is all very recent, you know, incredibly recent.

24:55So the idea is that birds first originated in Australia was only accepted in 2004. I mean, it was all very, very recent. The idea of bird cognition came about this century and we gave one of the first papers on that in 2002 at the International Ornithology Meeting in Beijing, 2002. And, you know, its work has exploded since then because it's now also clear that birds can be very well or bird intelligence can be compared very well with human intelligence.

25:35And that seemed as unlikely in 1999 as, you know, we have a neocortex and a completely different side of architecture. So how would we even begin to compare this? But we can. The point is we can. And the reason why we can is because the similar, similar ways of using the brain are in birds as in humans.

26:06And that means there is a connection between eyes and the forebrain. And they're, how should I put this, why that's really important, is on a different level too. They're not only neurons, but birds have exactly or exactly sometimes slightly differently named hormones circulating in the brain as well.

26:39So we've got the dopamine system, the serotonin system, and all of the others that are really hugely important in human development. And they're the same, that you believe the same in birds. So the idea of comparing birds and growth between humans and birds is not as unlikely. And then it's even less likely in cockatoos. I don't know, there are different ways in which eggs developed.

27:13The precocial ones, like your little ducks and chicken, they come out of the eggs and they go away and start pecking and finding their own food on the first day. And then there are the altricial ones that are dependent on the semi-altricial, and I won't give you all the categories. But the altricial ones, they're dependent on the parent, and they usually have down and haven't got proper temperature control and can't fly yet.

27:49And then there are very few super altricial ones. And the super altricial ones are two lots, humans and kakatoos. And super altricial means when they are born, and I've hand-raised two day-old ones where I needed to have special enlarged glasses and all of this and hold this so tightly that I won't kill them when I feed them.

28:20And when they're hatched, they're not only naked and tiny. I mean, a huge bird like a self-acrested kakatoos is half your little finger in size. When they're born. Yeah, when they're hatched. So half your little finger. And the beak is so soft, it's like a soft leather shoe. You can actually shape it any which way you like. They're blind for at least 10 days. Their eyes aren't developed yet.

28:52And hearing is almost non-existent. And the only thing they have is a crop. And even then, you need to hold their head a bit because it's a very, very thin little thing that's the neck. And the advantage is outside the body. And therefore, it can deal with more nutrients. It can grow longer as if it stayed in an egg or in a womb.

29:23So it's the same principle. You move the problem outside, but then you need far longer care. And it's a very interesting change that happened between the Australian original birds and then on their way to Asia and through Europe is that the different climate conditions. And as you know, there are so many birds migrating in Europe when you get harsh winters that this changes the time frame for the time they have for nesting and rearing.

29:54They're young. So the time of birds' parents they give to their offspring is substantially shorter than that of Australian bird parents and particularly short in cockatoos. So cockatoo youngsters stay with their parents for two years at least. And they, not only that, they have courageous when they want to feed, they leave them with aunts and uncles and say, you look after them and then they feed and then they come back.

30:27So the juvenile ones form friendships with others very often. So they develop a social network and develop what we call in psychology pro-social behavior, which in humans is hugely important. And it's now being wasting away because of the mobile phone hookups, because you don't, your hormones don't respond to that. So you don't learn pro-social behavior via video means.

31:00You need to actually have the person there to pick up the bits. But that's another topic on another time. I've written a paper on that too. But anyway, it's a real disaster in terms of socializing. But the cockatoos have that down pat. Very intense playing period. And I've shown that play behavior is directly related to cognition. Now I come back to your question, why don't, isn't intelligence the right word? It isn't because intelligence assumes somehow that we're all basing this on a human model.

31:36And unless an animal can come up to our intelligence and the G factor, the general factor of intelligence, it simply ain't intelligent. So that's not true. So what's happened in the field that you look at individual fields, innovation, problem solving, whether they share something or don't. And so there's a slightly different approach. And that's not assuming that, well, evolutionary would be a very wrong assumption.

32:12You evolve only to the point that is needed for you to survive. So you don't have a lot of extra luggage, you know, spare, spare neurons just for the heck of it. So you don't, that doesn't seem to work. So anyway. Waste of energy. It's important that, yeah. And in the last 20 years, it's been absolutely fabulous how much the work has advanced. And in my latest book, I've also said that the emotional, the knowledge of their emotions has skyrocketed,

32:51that we know that they can be fearful and anxious and sad and have the entire range of emotions, emotions, mistrust, trust, anger, jealousy. Gosh, I had one word that was so jealous. Somebody else put something. I was just going to see a show in words. Yeah, well, amazing. But that in itself is linked to cognition because you need a certain amount of knowledge in order to be afraid. But what I've shown lately is that extensive social play, which means also recognizing and understanding your opponent

33:30and what is serious and what is play, is at the very least, it's not, it's been argued for a long time that it's honing skills for the future. There have been studies on cats and various other things that the cats are no better how much they played or not when they're adults. There's no qualitative difference on how much they've played and their performance as adults. So that is not a useful thing. But what I believe is the case, think of hide and seek.

34:05Think of the game hide and seek. And magpies play that extensively and so do most other parrots. They love it. And that's quite a sophisticated game. Kids can only do that successfully between the age of five and seven. In the ages of seven, there's a very good Canadian study that showed that. And magpies and cockatoos can do that with ease. So they compare that because suddenly an object disappears, you see. The whole idea is hiding.

34:37Where has the other one gone? And for any immature or less cognitively able organism, that object would have disappeared. It wouldn't just be behind something else. It's gone, yeah. So, strangely enough, it's quite a complex process for the brain.

34:58But when you then find the other, the birds actually shriek. And so do kids when they find each other. How do you study this play behavior or even like how do you come to the conclusion that the birds are actually playing or that they have certain emotions? How do you study that?

35:25Well, let's put it this way. You will begin with ground rules and the ground rules are quite fixed. Play is divided now between solitary play, object play and social play. So, you know, if it's placed by itself, you know, there's nobody else around. And that may involve just swinging on a vine somewhere with one foot, you know, upside down. That has no value in survival, has it?

35:56But the bird enjoys it and wouldn't do it otherwise. And it couldn't even be quite dangerous unless there are lots of other members around that watch the scene because somebody swinging upside down and enjoying themselves could also be picked off, couldn't they? So, that's solitary play. Then you've got the object play when the individual plays with an object. Sometimes that can be a tusk of grass. It's just carried around on the beak running and then thrown away and picked up again and things like that.

36:32So, or a marble or a doll or magpies are very good at that. They take toys out of the garden. They usually bring them back, but they toss them about and see what they can do to it and whether it answers back and do the whole thing. And social play is the only one that we've found is really a significant measure also of cognitive ability, and that is social play. And when you see the number of species that engage in that,

37:07the number of species with social play becomes quite small across the world. So, there are ravens, there are cockatoos, there are parrots, and there are a few others that have been discovered recently. But it's a fairly select group. Mind you, it's still about 200, 300 species, but it's still a select group in terms of the ornithological taxonomy. So, you know, they come from very similar families. And out of 10,000 birds, 250 doesn't seem to be a great deal.

37:41But still, it's impressive. And behaviour is geared by either attention, vigilance, feeding, their activities, resting, singing, and so forth. And play behaviour means that they have no particular noticeable function in doing any of those. So, they don't do anything to make your stomach fuller or give you better sleep or anything.

38:17But yet, the bird seems to be totally not only at ease, it seems to enjoy itself. I mean, if you haven't seen a budgerigar rolling, doing roly-polies on the floor, it's very funny, but it's obviously enjoying itself. And if you look at Corellas, the greatest feat for Corella on solo play is to hang off an electricity line by its beak only.

38:48That is daredevil stuff. And they hang their feet down and they're birthing. And then usually what happens, the others are so intrigued that they come and want to try the same thing. So, it turns solo play very quickly into social games. And some of them do that provocatively, so until the next one comes. And then play fighting, that can look quite serious, but the point at which it would hurt, it stops. Okay. So, if that stops, then you know that it was play

39:21because it doesn't proceed to actual injury. Or if somebody says, oh, you know, makes a sound, I'm beginning to get frightened here, they stop immediately. So, you also know that it is play. Yeah. So, you study through observing the bird populations.

39:43Yes. Yes. And only in the wild. I don't ever do that in captivity because we know that captivity changes the behavior and sometimes markedly so. because they are suddenly not making independent decisions. They depend on food for somebody else rather than their own craft. And it, very often, long captivity might even mean that they wouldn't survive in the wild.

40:15Yeah. Okay. But in order for play behavior to occur in the wild, those individuals need to feel safe. Yeah. That was my next question because you need to feel safe in order to kind of get loose in a way and allow yourself to guard down. Yes, because you can't be vigilant. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You can't be vigilant at the same time as you play because you get absorbed in the play. And there are little sounds of exclamations sometimes in the bird,

40:46oh, if somebody comes up or catches up with you. But one of the intelligent games I've seen that is remarkable in terms of knowledge of gravity, a magpie juvenile was hanging upside down on, you know, the Hills Hoist, the Australian way of drying their washing. It's a movable thing with a washing line. So if the wind comes up, they start spinning around and dry the clothes more quickly.

41:18Very Australian. Anyway, there was a towel hanging there. And the towel was obviously a beach towel. It was very long. And a magpie juvenile hung upside down at the lower end of it. It was about two, three centimeters away from the bottom. And then it called over its parents and they knew exactly what this little one wanted and proceeded to pull it on one end. And if it started swinging, the magpie on the other side pulled it along even further.

41:53So they did exactly what human parents do when a child is on a swing. Yeah. Exactly. And I knew how far the magpie had gone, got out of the way so they wouldn't be hit. But they played this game. So that's a social game. But it also poses an amazing knowledge of the events because, you know, they could get injured and that. So that magpie in the end hangs there, look at me, by one leg.

42:24I'd love that. So, and I suppose these are the parameters. So the parameters have developed. They used to be quite vague, but they have developed quite clearly now to say there's this kind of form of play and it expresses itself in those ways. And now we are up to social play. And social play, in the paper, I only looked at 265 species of Australian birds and lifespan

42:57was even affected by it. So there was a clear, yes, there was an, in terms of your cognition, those that never played at the lowest scale in cognitive behavior, higher when they did play and highest when they did social play. And in longevity, they lived a good deal longer than those that didn't play. And the interesting part is that's where I debunked the tool using as a measure of intelligence.

43:33There was no difference between non-playing and playing or social or object or any solo playing birds and non-playing birds. So tool use had absolutely nothing to do with extra intelligence. And I'm saying extra intelligence because obviously when I used tools, they already had enough in terms of innovative behavior to deal with that, but without needing something extra. Maybe before we go into tool use, because we also had some question on that, I was wondering,

44:07especially in social play, do they have some kind of turn-taking behavior there as well so that they take turns in who is active and less active, or is that more or less that way? Well, that depends on the species, whether their society is hierarchically organized or relatively egalitarian. And even in magpies, you can have totally egalitarian pairs where male and female, apart from nest building, the female does nest building, but otherwise in feeding and then showing the

44:41offspring what to do and what not to do, male and female may be the same. And then I have come across one or two extremely bossy males who insisted on feeding. First, who insisted that the young got stepped out of the way when he came. And if they didn't obey, he would give a sharp, vocal reminder. If the youngster then didn't respond, it was a peck on the head. And then usually what happened, and that's very interesting, a posture that seems to be

45:17fairly widespread amongst mammals, like dogs, magpies fall on their backs with their legs out. Yeah. Submissive, yes. Submissive posture. Submissive, please don't peck at me. I'm going to be a good boy or girl or something. But it's exactly the same principle. And then the male, even the bossiest male, will leave off and step back. But the next chance, next time that same juvenile misbehaves, the peck will be a more serious one.

45:52But I've also seen a very cheeky juvenile who falls on his back before the parent can even get angry.

46:02So there you are.

46:07And you've also shortly touched on, I think you shortly touched on emotions as well. Does play also impact emotion management in birds or is that unrelated? Well, yes, play is highly emotional. I mean, it is the reason, one of the reasons why it is done at all is you're interacting and it's exciting. And even in some play fighting, there's the sense of risk and adventure and, oh, you know,

46:41this is getting very serious. And yes, so emotions play a major role in this. But there is one biological factor that we definitely know is an advantage for social play behavior. And that is in those moments when excitement is greatest, and you hear that in children too, they sometimes scream when they have these exciting moments. It's actually a scream of fear, and it then turns into excitement because you know it's

47:17not real. And that is a clever biological thing because the corticosterone or cortisol is the stress hormone in the body, cortisol for humans and corticosterone for birds. They go up mile high when they're exposed to this supposed risk. And what if I lose this battle, you know, in a play fight or I get hurt or something? Or this person jumps up from the hide and seek thing and is suddenly in front of me.

47:48Well, there's a heartbeat increases and the cortisol levels go up in humans and corticosterone levels go up in birds. And the incredibly important moment is that because they already defined their interaction as a game, they know it's not serious, so the stress levels go down very rapidly. And if that happens in the case of a real danger, that is a huge advantage for survival.

48:20Because imagine if you're a captain of a ship and your ship is about to sink. You don't want anybody screaming. You want somebody who's calm and collected. And the calm and collected comes from keeping your cortisol levels under control. And that actually is usually learned. This is, as I say, leadership is not, there are no born leaders. They're actually made. And part of that, at the simplest level, is the action of hormones in case of danger.

48:54Yeah. Right? So if you have the danger moment, I've got beautiful images where one bird stands over the other and the other one screams, oh, you know, I'm vanquished now. And the other one lets off, the other one jumps up, and they flap themselves up a bit, and then they go and feed together. So you know they're back to the real world and they've done their game, but it also means

49:26they're not stressed. Yeah. And birds that don't play don't get that kind of physiological advantage. They just don't. So when they get afraid, they get really afraid, and stress levels stay up, and that is enough to very often shorten their lives or lead to responses that are not useful responses. Because if you keep a clear head, you can also make a decision whether you should fight

49:58or flee or hide or so, you see, you buy time with that to make a decision that is more fitting the situation. I don't want to say rational because it's not used in a bird behavior, but you know what I mean. Yeah. And so this can be observed within the same species. So members of a species that do more social play have more cognitive advances over the

50:29ones that don't. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Social play. So the biggest brains, it means four brains, and the biggest number of neurons and birds are those that are social players. So whether one causes the other, we don't know. So we don't speak of causality, but they're associated, and they go together. So that's been a recent eureka moment in my life to have discovered that.

51:04But anyway, so that's a little sloppy to talk about big-brained birds because the overall bird brain size is not the important one, but the interaction and how that is translated and how many connections a bird has even in the brain, you see. That's all super fascinating. I never thought about how playing can actually influence the connectivity of the brain this

51:44much. Yes. And so that kind of behavior is not honing skills so much as it is preparing the individual for correctly and quickly assessing a situation in which it finds itself. And that can not only lead to survival, but also to new measures. If you're very hungry, some animals would get highly stressed.

52:17A bird that has dealt with stress levels extremely well while it was growing up is that it's able to then think of alternatives and look for alternatives. And in Australia, where we have droughts and fires in such massive dimensions, you sometimes

52:52get flocks of 1,000 sapphire crystal cockatoos or corellas. And I was often asked, why are there so many flying together? Said it's for safety reasons. Said one of us needs to know what we can do next and where we can find food. So it's information sharing and following the lead and seeing whether that gets you somewhere where you can be safe. And so far, that kind of management of fear has worked very well for all cockatoos.

53:25Yeah. It's also a bit like exposure to a situation and then noticing nothing bad happens. Yes. And since you, I'm just thinking it's a bit comparable, maybe also to humans, because when you are in a situation that is stressful and you learn, well, I managed that situation well, then you get more confident in the same situation. And like, I assume it's still a different process, but it's quite similar from the mechanisms behind.

53:54Exactly. So let's say I was bullied in primary school really badly and the teacher took no interest in that. And there were three big boys. I mean, I thought they were big boys, but a lot of big, and I was very small. And I finally told my father, and he didn't take much interest in it, but he said, why don't you learn judo? Yeah. So I went to judo training.

54:25I actually, as an eight-year-old, went to judo training. And then those three boys waited outside, and I'd learned the very basic things in judo that you can even do as a six-year-old, you know, to throw somebody over. And I thought, I'm not going to run time. I've learned judo. You see, there's a confidence, so that keeps the stress level down. And I'm going to try this. And I landed this guy who was literally more than a head larger than I was on his back

55:00and then calmly walked away and hopped all the way home, totally happy. I was never bullied again. And it didn't take any strength of mine. And it was just technique. And that was a real big turning point. But it also, what I did, I didn't run. I wasn't afraid. And there is a very similar thing happening in the birds. And the more social support you have and the more you can learn from your social environment,

55:36be that in play behavior or in foraging or anything, the more confident you are. The more confident you are, the more reasonable decisions you can make or looking for alternatives. Yes. Yeah. We've talked really, really shortly, or you touched really shortly on to tool use as well. What defines as tool use? Maybe really basic. When is it tool use and when is it just maybe also object play? So where's the difference there?

56:07Oh, tool use is usually confined to getting something that you can't get or building something that you can't otherwise build. So let's say the excitement in the 1960s was when Jane Goodall discovered that chimpanzees in her research group were taking sticks and putting them inside hollows of trees and fishing out these termites.

56:40Now, using that stick is not part of the body. It's used precisely and specifically for fishing out these termites. Then they took the branch into their mouth and wiped the termites off and they had them all fed all of them. And, of course, very good protein, very good for them. And that was a very important moment. And that moment I'm not trying to play down. And the reason why it's important is because humans have only excelled in one thing.

57:11I mean, we are very poor and puny species, actually. We can't run very fast. We can't fly. We can't take much cold. We've got to make our own clothes, not to freeze or burn. No. Of humans as a toolmaker and a tool inventor. And humans have invented tools to build architecture. I mean, you know, there are termites that are very good architects,

57:41but as toolmakers and architects. So there was a first example that this wasn't entirely first found in humans, but was already present in chimpanzees. And their chimpanzees are our closest relatives. So that made a very fine line to say once and for all, there is nothing in nature that doesn't have a precursor of one way or another. And the idea that humans are unique in every respect is from an evolutionary point of view,

58:12cognitive point of view, any point of view, actually. I can't think of how people ever thought that. But it's impossible. That's not how evolution works. You need to have the paths to make further development. And these developments can be very slow. They may take millions of years. They may need new gene expression and all of that sort of thing. But when you look at tools, and I mean in humans, it was absolutely essential. They would have died if they hadn't made the tools.

58:44They would have died because they couldn't jump enough, run enough, fly, do anything. They would never have caught anything. And, of course, they were let off the hook a bit once dogs came into their lives. And agricultural development was an important step away from that. But when humans developed tools, they already had the maximum size of the brain that they have today. So it wasn't a matter of a developing brain. It was a discovery and a very important one for humans.

59:15But it had nothing to do with brain size. Yeah. Not extra brain size, not extra power. So the idea that tool using is an important measure of intelligence is misleading at the very least. Because I found absolutely, and I think I mentioned that before, in all the birds we put through all the statistical tests, there was no correlation whatever between intelligence or cognition, number of neurons and tool use.

59:52So the tool use didn't have bigger brains, bigger ball brains, I have to say, with more neurons, than other birds. Nothing. Not even the slightest difference. Yeah. We tried to work at every, we thought first we were wrong, but we weren't. And so tool use is not a matter of that, but it is a matter of innovativeness that within the given cognitive ability of a species can be utilized to use sticks.

1:00:25And it's usually sticks. And it's an elongation of a beak, you know. It makes sense. And, of course, the New Caledonian crow was a big event. And now they're all very quiet about it because that learned to fish out these grubs from hollow branches in New Caledonia. And these grubs have pinces at the end. And that's why they walked onto this bit of stem and came out with it and they had their food item, you know.

1:01:01Food was very scarce to find. So they had learned how they could find food. Now, that is very innovative and very good. But the use of the stick is just an elongation. And you find it in many species of much lower number of forebrain neurons as well. So it's not specific to those birds that play socially. Is it that birds learn to use new tools by observation or is it a kind of social component?

1:01:36Well, yes, it can be. It can be. In quite a number of cases, it's probably just one single bird in a group that has had this aha moment. And used it and the others copied it. So there are some good studies to say general intelligence actually decreases in groups because you can be lazy and wait for somebody else.

1:02:06And, you know, observation is enough. But observation in a form is also learning. And if you do it properly, that's perfectly fine. Now, if you have the, I don't know whether you've ever heard of that study in the Bluetits. It's Bluetits is Blaumizer, I think, in German. Yeah. And they found in England in the 50s or something that one bird had taken the tops of milk bottles, you know, they were left by the milkman outside, and they flicked off the tops of those.

1:02:46And people put them back on again and said, oh, this is a bit naughty of this. A tiny bird, I mean, the Bluetit is a tiny bird. Within two years, half of the north of England had the tops removed from their milk bottles because it had been passed on to every other Bluetits. So that can happen too, you know, and, yeah, well, anyway, so learning can move across large populations and it can sometimes remain totally within one family.

1:03:24You have that quite often in orcas that one family has solved a problem how to take baby seals from the beach by learning a certain way of beaching, but it hasn't ever caught on anywhere else. Yeah. So it remains a knowledge or a way of solving the problem. That in itself wouldn't make them more intelligent. Yeah. That might not need extra, you see. So, again, the orcas would have been in their cognitive ability the same as the other orcas, but they found a different way.

1:04:02So innovativeness to a certain extent, yes, it requires cognitive ability, obviously, but how much of it and whether it grows because of it or whether it's a sign of specific cognitive abilities or high cognitive abilities is now being pretty much debunked. That's super interesting because I think it's still a very prevalent misconception within cognitive science education, at least, that truly uses this one beacon of intelligence that we can measure animals by.

1:04:44I sent you the paper with the figures, didn't I? Yeah. Yeah. Show them to Elsa as well because they are based on hundreds of birds and very clearly you can't fool around with those. So, yes, you are absolutely right because it suits us, you see. Ultimately, we always want to talk about humans and we think somehow, you know, whatever we do is superimposing upon animals.

1:05:18And to divorce that study or our understanding from what we expect of something, which doesn't make biological sense anyway, because what we need from life might be very different from what they need from life. And the kind of cognitive world that they inhabit may be substantially different in many ways. I mean, it's way, way better than ours. They can hear better, see better, do lots of things better. And we can't fly. I mean, pretty pathetic in many ways.

1:05:50But the total thing to then superimpose what we understand, culture, yes, birds don't have culture, birds don't have music. Not true, not true. But how much does play a role in their lives, you know, is a question that from an evolutionary and ecological point you should ask, not how do they compare with us. And we do this comparison the whole time.

1:06:21And there was an entire time when legal challenges were made to the American courts to lift great apes to human status, personhood. It was a big argument. It lasted for about 10 years.

1:06:44And somebody said that in the paper and I was asked to comment on it. And I did one off the cuff, really, in a lousy mood. I was so angry with it, but in a fairly civilized way. I said, well, look, I don't think there's any reason to think that it would be an elevated position to be like humans. Humans have invented wars. Humans have invented torture. Humans have invented machines that cause such destruction.

1:07:15And frankly, you know, animals don't do that. So why would we want them to share a personhood with us? It just doesn't make any sense. But we still think we are superior in every which way. And I think it's a mistake because what we are currently doing with the environment is sitting on a branch that's getting fairly thin and we are sawing through on the other end. And being blissfully unaware, again, you see, we seem to think we can solve everything with technology.

1:07:53And that's not the point. So it's lovely to look at things that happen in the natural world and under natural conditions. And my colleague and friend Leslie Rogers was the first to show that light input on an embryo changed the laterality in the brain and could change behavior totally.

1:08:23And this is so important that the environment itself can alter function and even structure of the brain and change behavior and so forth. And that goes for us as well. So, you know, we need our vitamin D. If we don't have our 10-minute of vitamin D, we go very sick. So we seem to think we are entirely divorced from nature and we can create the world that we see fit.

1:08:55We don't know how far we depend on everything in life in that interaction of all the particles that are there. And that's a very important lesson to have learned. So, yeah.

1:09:16This is a really nice conclusion point, I think. It's a really nice resolution for the end that we are not as removed from nature as we want to believe as humans. And, yeah. I was just personally wondering if there's a bird that you personally fascinates you the most. Ah, yes. Well, you know, because I'm egalitarian, I love every word as it comes in. And I've had anything, anything literally.

1:09:48And Australia has 800 species. I haven't had all 800, not many shorebirds, but just about everything else. And there are differences in which you can relate to something. I mean, kookaburras are the most gorgeous birds. And I hand raised them. I could fit two of them in my hand. They were so tiny. They were altricial. They weren't super altricial, but altricial. And they were blind for four days, not at 11 or 12 as the cockatoo.

1:10:19But when they grew up, they certainly were tame. There's a moment when you can reintroduce them to adults that haven't been able to breed that year, and they may be able to adopt them. It's a very tricky procedure, but I managed to get them to adopt it once they could fly. So they flew off with their new parents, and then I felt terribly guilty for weeks and looked for them. And I thought, what if I've made a mistake and these poor things are starving?

1:10:50I saw them on one of the trees just so high up I had to take a letter, took food up to them. They watched me with interest climb up all the bloody letter to the top and really quite dangerous and offered the food. And they looked at them and said, very nice of you to come up with this, but we've got our own food and our own parents, and they flew off and were then fed by the new adoptive parents. So, you know, you knew then they were all right, but they don't actually become friends of.

1:11:21Yeah. So some of the limitations the birds impose themselves. But the magpies can become friends for life, and really I've had magpie families that when they have their youngsters and they've just left the nest, they will come to the back porch and introduce them. And they're like Victorian parents. They were very formal about this. And I keep warning people and said, don't give the juveniles the food.

1:11:54Give the adults the food. And they decide whether the young ones will get any of that, whether it's good enough. They investigate and all of that. But it happened every year. Yeah. Just gargling, gorgling away, chirping away at the entrance. I came out. I duly admired their offspring. It was a very nice interaction, gave them a little gift, and thank you for that. And then the young ones knew who we were, and they will never forget your face, and they will never trouble you.

1:12:27And they might even help. You know, in one family, it was a snake in the grass, literally a snake in the grass, not a metaphor. And the magpie came and started swooping the guys to get him away from there. And he thought that was very unkind of the magpie to swoop him. And then he happened to look down and saw the snake, and he could have saved his life. It was one of the deadly snakes, and Australia has many of them. So, you know, they're very different stages.

1:12:58And, of course, you tend to get closer to those with whom you have the most or long-lasting interactions. So, I've had a self-equested cockatoo for 20 years, which was a very difficult rescue bird of an abused bird, and it was so bad. Everybody told me, you have to put it down, and I didn't. And I got it back to health, but 20 years later, I died of a heart attack. But still, they had 20 years, and in those 20 years, it decided it was the boss of the house.

1:13:34And every time somebody else came to the house, and it was a very good alarm call, knew much earlier than we did, he decided to insist that they had to be introduced to him first. So, any guest imagined the formal situations you could occur, had to go outside and say, here, these are our guests, and I hope you don't mind if we welcome them, and then take them in again. So, there are lots of stories to tell, and I had a galah that was so exceptional,

1:14:08that it learned to speak in a way, and I was 75 years old, and it learned new words. And when I went out at night and came back later, it was angry with me. It turned its back to me, and when birds are angry, they raise their neck and head feathers. So, you don't want to put your hands close to it. So, I had to speak to it for it to turn around, and it took about 20 minutes.

1:14:42But when it first turned around, it was still bitchy, and they said to me, where have you been? I mean, I thought, well, you know, this is like a teenager being charged by my parents. But the bird made appropriate responses for the situation, and never used those words in other situations. So, it's very interesting what happens in language and signal acquisition, and that's another field that's very exciting.

1:15:14So, how can I not love any of these birds? And the noisy minors, when I come up in one car always, I get free passage. I came in another car, and they all alarm called, and I had to get out of the car. I said, it's just me, and then they were dispersed. It was okay. I had free passage. So, once you read the language and know their signals, you can see the depth of interaction, the multitude of possibilities,

1:15:49and so many specific abilities of birds, as well as similarities with humans, especially at the social level, you know, when they form pairs and stay married for 60 years, I ask you, you know, and still give each other gifts, little gifts. So, I think it's gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. Don't quote me on the last one. A scientist isn't meant to say things are gorgeous, but they are gorgeous.

1:16:23So, anyway. Did you have something else, Imogen? I was just saying that that sounds really adorable.

1:16:31Birds staying together for so long and giving each other gifts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is gorgeous and very special. And once you recognize that this was, you know, these are completely different species. And the reason why we didn't think of that is because a beak is fixed. So, you can't go by facial muscles and judge moods by the face. But you can by the feathers and sometimes by the head movement or the wing movement.

1:17:06And I had a tawny frogmouth for 30 years. Eulenschwalm. I just wrote a paper in German for that bird, for one of the Nature Naturschutz papers. Anyway, it actually has, forms red rings in the iris and that expresses anger. Wow. That's fascinating. Nothing else.

1:17:37Nothing else. And there are one or two other species that do that, but I discovered that and I thought, well, that's interesting. And the other birds read it and didn't come any closer, you see. So, there are lots of signals that people don't know about and many of which I've discovered by accident, simply not because I set out to have a form, formulated kind of project. It was after I discovered the behaviour that I then wanted to know more and then I formulated

1:18:12the project. So, it was the other way around and because it wasn't in captivity, I could say, well, if this occurs in the natural environment, I must have some function, something. I'm going to find it out. I need another 50 years. I probably won't have that. So, anyway.

1:18:37So, anything else, Imogen?

1:18:42I don't have anything else. I think we can come to our... I've talked to half the desk anyway. Yeah, but it's super fascinating. Yeah, really, really fascinating. Yeah. Such a deep dive into a topic that I've only brushed on so far in my studies. Oh, well, nice if you like it. Well, that's all I can say. All we can do in an hour and a bit, I suppose.

1:19:13I'd love to show you some pictures. You know, the amazing part of self-equested cockatoos is in the urban environment. I mean, they are treated badly. They're doing badly. Many of the cockatoos are endangered because we've collected some that are starving because their particular food items have been simply ripped down or been subject to bushfires. And they've come to urban environments and have... You have the same sort of bin system, haven't you?

1:19:44Big bins where you put rubbish and green... Green is like kind of green rubbish and then just normal waste. It's not bio waste. We've got three. You have red as household rubbish. It goes to landfill or whatever. And then there's a recyclable one and then there's a green bin for green matter. Well, the bins are about a metre 40 high and they have a fairly heavy lid. And the self-equested cockatoo, while it is a big bird, is something like 600 gram.

1:20:21It's a bit more than one pound, has learned to open one of these bins by going to the outer edge, taking the rim on its back and walking underneath. And when it's high enough, it turns around quickly, takes its beak and pushes it back. And that lid is quite heavy. And so it's a matter of gravity and knowing when it can tip the weight. And then two others come and watch, while the one that has opened the lid goes inside

1:20:55the bin and searches suitable material, brings it up to the top and the others take it away.

1:21:03So that is innovative. Yeah. And it's kind of a shining problem. And not very good for them. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But not very good for them, you know. Half of the stuff is KFC. And what's KFC in German? Have you got KFC? Yeah, we have chicken and chip. Yeah. We'll just have it as well. Yeah. Just big brands. You know, people throw this kind of food away. And of course, you get plastics as well. I'm pleased to say that whatever I've observed, they put the cast, the plastics aside.

1:21:38They actually only take the food stuff, but some of the food stuff, it's not very good. Yeah. No. But anyway, these are adaptations and they're happening right now. And they haven't become any more intelligent, but they have shown innovation and initiative. And they haven't been afraid to look for alternatives. And facing new issues and seeing the opportunities they have given the environment they are now living in. Exactly. Exactly.

1:22:07Fantastic. I'd love to send you a picture. It really is funny. You can actually can send us pictures. And if you don't mind, we could also share them on Instagram. So people can also, if they have listened to the episode, go to Instagram and just look at some pictures you were mentioning. I think that would be really lovely for us to include as well. Okay.

1:22:26Maybe let's bring it back to cognition. What role does cognition play in your research? Oh, I know, Miss. I can't think that there's any part of behavior that hasn't involved cognition. And the idea that you can study cognition as a separate thing within, let's say, just bonobos and chimpanzees is nonsense. In fact, cognition was very funny.

1:22:59We had an argument about kiosks and chimpanzees, that the chimpanzees would immediately be able to solve the problem. They had created in Scotland a nice fruit box. And it was so complicated. It had three layers and they were all in glass, but they had locks that did very different things in different parts. And the chimpanzees took hours to complete it and some couldn't complete the task and they couldn't get the fruit on the third look on the inside.

1:23:35So there was a fruit box about a meter high. It was all steel. Then they decided to take that fruit box from that university and sent it all the way to Vienna to test on kiosk. The kiosk took a third of the time and solved all the problems immediately without trials, errors, looking at the problem, investigating it first and doing it. So, you see, these ideas had never come about before.

1:24:08Nobody had tested them. So they all thought they were stupid because they're just flying about and eating fruit that's available on the ground or whatever. And it's simply not true. So cognition is, in fact, a precondition for them to have survived. And it goes into fairly abstract domains. In some areas, I'm convinced it has immoral aspects and memory and feeling guilty and having done the wrong thing and hiding. And so, you know, these are very complex behaviors.

1:24:43You try to hide because you've just done the wrong thing. I've observed that too. And people laugh because they immediately know there was a young male that had an affair with a female in the next property. And I observed them for a good long while. And he knew that he shouldn't do that. So he went undercover, tried to remain undercover. And when any of his own family saw him, he pretended to peg and look innocent. And I showed this little bit and people were always laughing.

1:25:18I didn't have to say anything. They understood that it was the beginning of a moral development, very obviously. Yeah. So, but you see, you can't separate cognition from emotions either, whether you like somebody or not. It's a cognitive function. You know, obviously some of that cognitive function is getting lost these days because people make such bad choices in partners.

1:25:48And when they make bad choices, it is a cognitive deficit, really, because, you know, they haven't learned pro-social interaction well enough to read the minute little science. So there you are, something for a psychological practice, very interesting. They should all be shown films.