New study of crows and parrots highlights different types of intelligence
Thursday, June 9, 2011 - 11:02
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- In an experiment designed to illustrate the different ways that animals use their own unique type of intelligence to accomplish certain goals, a team of zoologists and biologists from the University of Vienna and Oxford University, led by biologist Dr. Alice Auersperg have shown that New Caledonian crows and a type of green parrot called the kea, are both able to accomplish similar difficult tasks, but go about doing so in very different ways. In a paper published in PLoS ONE, the team describe how when confronted with a box with food inside, both species of birds showed high levels of intelligence in getting at that food, but went about doing so in ways uniquely suited to their physical and behavioral attributes.