“I was just super excited about the variety,” said Barbara Klump, a behavioural ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, a scientific research institute in Germany, who led the research. Another person installed spikes to prevent the cockatoos from landing. In one case, someone tried to scare away the cockatoos with a rubber snake. That ranged from weighting the bin lids to shoving old sneakers or a pool noodle in the hinge to fitting specially designed commercial latches onto the bins that residents call “cockie locks.” In a recent study, scientists found 52 different ways that people protected their bins from cockatoos. Only a small percentage of cockatoos can flip the lid, but once it’s open, other birds dive in to search for food. To open a bin, a cockatoo generally uses its beak and foot to lift the lid, shuffle along the side of it and then flip it over. Drinkwater, recalling one particularly bad morning when cockatoos tossed garbage everywhere. On a recent trash day, an unprotected bin on his street was hit. But some of his neighbours still have their guard down. Now, he wedges a plastic drink bottle in the hinge of the lid, which he says prevents the birds from fully flipping it open. He then switched to using a brick, but the cockatoos knocked it out of the way, got into the bin and threw trash all over the street. It worked until the lid snapped off during trash collection one week, when a garbage truck used a robotic arm to grab the bin and turn it upside down. Drinkwater thought he had a solution: He attached a piece of wood to the underside of his bin lid, which he figured would make it too heavy for the cockatoos to lift. Many days, the cockatoos seem to be winning. Researchers say it’s a unique opportunity to investigate how two species can learn-that is, cockatoos teaching others how to get into bins or people swapping bin-protection methods with their neighbours-to quickly adapt to what the other is doing. The unusual bird bin-opening, a behaviour which scientists believe developed only in recent years, is now the subject of rigorous academic study. But in Australia, the age-old tension has reached wild heights. Trashy encounters between man and beast aren’t uncommon, as any suburban resident who has tried to keep raccoons out of the rubbish can attest. As the cockatoos figure out ways into people’s bins, the humans respond with evermore elaborate devices to protect their garbage. This otherwise idyllic coastal neighbourhood is Ground Zero for what scientists call a potential “innovation arms race” between humans and cockatoos battling for control of the area’s garbage bins. “Some people put bricks on top of their bins, but the cockatoos just push them off with their nose.” “It is chaos every Tuesday morning,” said Grant Drinkwater, 61, who has experimented with various devices to stop cockatoos from getting into his bins, which are collected that day each week. There was a lock on the bin, but it seemed either broken or not properly closed. The birds, a type of parrot that is native to Australia, were acting out a common scene in this beachside suburb. Another loitered nearby, waiting to see if its companion found tasty morsels in the trash. STANWELL PARK, Australia-Outside a local cafe, a sulphur-crested cockatoo perched on a garbage bin, trying to open the lid.
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