Parrots Will Share Currency to Help Their Pals Purchase Food

Parrots Will Share Currency to Help Their Pals Purchase Food

Katherine J. Wu

“They all really like the walnuts,” says Désirée Brucks, an animal behaviorist at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. “They don’t get them in their normal diet, so it’s quite a good reward.”

But despite the nuts’ value—or perhaps because of it—parrots are also willing to share their treats and the tokens to buy them with other birds. Given the option, the birds will transfer the precious metal rings to a friend in a neighboring cage so they, too, can enjoy some nutty nosh—even without the promise of reciprocation, Brucks’ latest research shows.

But big-brained African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) may be the first avian known to engage in this helpful behavior, Brucks’ team reports today in the journal Current Biology. Parrots, it seems, don’t just have the ability to comprehend metal rings as currency for food, but they also “understand the consequences their actions can have on another individual,” says Christina Riehl, an expert in bird behavior at Princeton University who wasn’t involved in the research. “That’s pretty sophisticated reasoning.”

In research labs and wild habitats alike, plenty of animals have been observed gifting their friends with grub. Bonobos pass morsels of meat to strangers, vampire bats barf blood into hungry relatives’ mouths, and canines will tap their snouts to touch screens to share sausages with packmates.

My Mum has a wee Cockatiel as her companion throughout the lockdown, she and he have become very close over the decade or longer he’s been around. I am frequently surprised at his ‘intelligence’, I put it in italics because I’m not sure what type of intelligence I’m talking about, but he knows what’s going on around him and has a strong emotional attachment with my Mum. I suspect that they love each other and I’ve become quite fond of him too, even if he has the character of a grumpy old man and he probably can’t stand me because I like to tease him.