Popular Science - Immigrating great tits learn from their new neighbors

A puzzle box experiment shows that the birds learn new tricks when changing environments.
By Laura Baisas

Posted on Nov 14, 2024



One crafty bird species may be the latest example of social learning in nonhuman animals. In an experiment with great tits (Parus major), a team of scientists found that when the birds move to a new environment, they pay very close attention to what the other birds are doing. This ultimately leads them to quickly adopt useful new behaviors. The findings are described in a study published November 14 in the journal PLOS Biology.

Getting to the cream
Several animals that live in groups learn from one another, including elephants, whales, and some primates. However, the great tit is the species that has busted open a window into understanding animal social learning for scientists.

In the 1920s, residents from a small town in England were the first to report that these small birds were opening up foil lids on milk bottles to get to the cream inside. Soon after, people across Europe reported the same behavior with their unsecured milk bottles. Scientists began to speculate that birds across the continent were possibly learning this behavior from one another.

Exactly how they were doing this remained a bird secret until 2015. A team led by behavioral ecologist Lucy Aplin conducted an experiment on a population of great tits in an English forest. The experiment showed that the birds were able to learn how to get food out of a puzzle box by copying the solution from others. This confirmed that the original milk-raiding birds were passing on their methods to various flocks.

“Social learning is a great shortcut when it comes to safely testing new waters,” Michael Chimento, an evolutionary biologist and co-author on the new study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz, said in a statement. “Paying attention to what others are doing gives you the chance to see whether a new behavior is beneficial, or potentially dangerous. Copying it means that you too can reap the reward.”

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