TV helps birds to learn
Scientists have recently proved that birds can learn key skills from watching videos on TV.
By watching videos of each other eating, blue tits and great tits can learn to avoid eating food that “tastes disgusting” or those that are potentially toxic, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge.
The research, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, showed that blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) learned best by watching their own species, whereas great tits (Parus major) learned equally from both great tits and blue tits.
In order to test the observation skills of the birds, researchers placed each bird in a room with a television set that played a video showing another bird's response to consuming unpleasant prey. The video displayed a clear “disgust” response - a short, sharp shake of the head and beak.
In addition to learning directly from trial and error, birds can decrease the likelihood of bad experiences - and potential poisoning - by watching others. Such social transmission of information about unfamiliar prey could have significant effects on prey evolution, and help explain why different bird species flock together.
“Blue tits and great tits forage and feed together, and have a similar diet, although they may differ in their hesitation to try different foods. By watching others, they can quickly and safely learn which prey is best to eat. This can reduce the time and energy they spend testing different prey and also help them avoid the harmful effects of eating toxic prey," says Liisa Hämäläinen, a former PhD student in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.
This is the first study to prove that blue tits are as capable as great tits at learning from observing others. Previous research suggested that great tits were better than blue tits, but these experiments only looked at food that would be classified as “tasty” to the birds.
The researchers tested the birds’ response to the videos by giving them the chance to test ‘prey’, consisting of a mixture of white paper packages with small almond flakes fixed to them - some soaked in a bitter-tasting solution, other potentially toxic and the rest edible.
The toxic packages were marked with a square and the other edible options were marked with a cross. Results showed that the birds were less inclined to choose the ‘toxic’ or ‘disgusting’ prey options.
"In our previous work, using great tits as a model predator, we found that if one bird sees another being repelled by a new type of prey, they both learn to avoid it in the future. By expanding the research, we now see that different bird species have the ability to learn from each other too," says Dr. Rose Thorogood, one of the lead researchers, previously at the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology and now at the University of Helsinki's HiLIFE Institute of Life Science in Finland.
This new research shows that using social information to avoid bad outcomes is especially important in nature. As blue tits and great tits are commonly found foraging together in the wild, there are plenty of opportunities for the species to learn from each other. If prey avoidance behaviours spreads quickly within predator populations, this could benefit the ongoing survival of the prey species significantly, and help drive its evolution.
