The “blue beard macaws”, a kind of endemic parrot of Bolivia and in danger of extinction, are capable of learning new tricks and actions observing their classmates, a form of imitation of third parties of humans and that could help understand the group behaviors so subtle and social of these animals.
He was verified by researchers at the Max Institute of Animal Cognition in collaboration with Scientists from Loro Parque de Tenerife, who demonstrated how these animals learn to show certain unusual behaviors demonstrated by another congeneres without having received an explicit training; Today they publish the results of their work in the journal Scientific Reports.
The “imitation of third parties”, underlined the researchers, is the ability to learn through the passive observation of the interactions between two individuals, instead of through direct instruction, and in humans, that ability is associated with the transmission of cultural practices and social norms, but no previous research had found evidence of imitation of third parties beyond humans.
The researchers studied 14 macaws Blue Loro Park; They were twelve experimental subjects and a couple of males trained for eight years and tried if the former were able to imitate the actions that those who had already been prepared and respond to the gestures of the researchers; They found yes.
They lifted a leg, they turned, beat the wings upon receiving an order without having been specifically trained for it, and some of the birds imitated actions spontaneously even before receiving the order or a reward.
The biologist ESHA HALDAR and her companions of the Research Group on Animal Cognition that the German Max Plank Institute has in Loro Park founded a “naive” test group that observed in a passive way to a demonstrator of the same species while performing arbitrary and unusual actions in response to the gestural orders they received from humans.
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A form of imitation only seen in humans
The group of “naive” parrots learned more actions, faster and more accurately than the parrots included in a “control group”, so the researchers concluded that the species is capable of learning and imitating simply by observing the “theirs.”
The findings are notable because they demonstrate for the first time that the imitation of third parties exists in a non -human animal, the Foundation Park Loro highlighted in a note spread today.
The researcher ESHA HALDAR stressed that this type of imitation had not been described before in animals, and said that in human beings, the imitation of third parties is widely observed and is frequent in many current hunter-gatherer societies, where children usually learn social norms passively observing their elders, instead of learning through direct interaction.
“It is normal for human children to begin to imitate from birth, but only develop the ability to imitate third parties from the second year of life, when they also develop the ability to adopt perspectives. Although our findings are not a direct proof of the ability to adopt perspectives in macaws, they do suggest their presence,” said Fedar.
The scientific director of Loro Park Foundation, Rafael Zamora, observed that the blue beard macaws in Bolivia live together for a part of the year in social groups and the composition of the group can change over time, which requires faster integration of individuals and a synchronization of the whole.
“The imitation of congeners in parrots can facilitate these processes through learning typical group behaviors, coordinated movements or gestures,” said Rafael Zamora.
With EFE information
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