Our highly intelligent and loud sulphur-crested cockatoos have developed a new skill, opening wheelie bins in order to raid their contents. This behaviour has been surveyed by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, the Australian Museum and Taronga Zoo over the past four years and the ‘word’ is spreading.

Help the researchers learn about cockatoo bin-opening: whether you ‘have’ or ‘have not’ observed this behaviour is valuable to the study, so please participate.

Reported in three suburbs in 2018, the ‘knowledge’ has spread to 44 suburbs by late 2019. The research published in the journal Science reported differing techniques between suburbs resulting from different sub-cultures that have developed in areas that are well separated from each other.