I don't really like domestic birds very much. But they are maybe the best part of the entire video internet. This is the greatest bird video I have personally seen so far:
Dr. Auersperg and her co-workers have found that Goffin’s cockatoos are more geared toward solving technical tasks. Alternately using their bills and feet, the birds can systematically make their way through a lock with five different complex mechanisms on it. Should they discover that one of the steps can be skipped en route to opening a chamber with a nut inside, they skip it the next time around.
And in an act of ingenuity that Dr. Auersperg called “sensational” for an animal not known to use tools in the wild, a cockatoo named Figaro one day started carefully chipping at the edge of a larch wood frame until he had formed a long, slender pole, which he then wielded in his bill like a hockey stick to knock out pebbles and nuts hidden under boxes.
“It took him 20 minutes to make his first tool,” Dr. Auersperg said. “After that, he could do it in less than five minutes.”
Other cockatoos that watched Figaro build his tool and then retrieve his nut reward were soon chipping at scraps of wood and batting out nuts.
Figaro didn’t stop there. Soon he was using sticks to draw patterns in the sand, Dr. Auersperg said.