The porcorli ara golablu are the only other animal (for now) to know how to learn by observing an interaction between two other specimens.
Some animals have the ability to learn a behavior by indirectly observing someone else who puts it into practice (whether it is its species or not), without intention to want to teach it, and to imitate it automatically. A therefore indirect form of learning that until recently we thought it belonged only to us humans:
The study published on Scientific Reports reveals how it is present in at least another species. And we are not talking, as one might imagine, of primates, but of parrots.
Learn on behalf of third parties. Pappagalli in general are very intelligent birds, which often live in complex social groups and have shown that they can learn by imitation, to know how to build tools and other signs of higher cognitive capacity.
However, they had never been tested for what is called “Third-Party Imitation”, a learning method that involves learning a behavior by observing an interaction without intervening directly. To test their skills, the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Intelligence team that conducted the study chose the Golablù Ara, a large endemic parrot of Bolivia which was chosen for the complexity of its social groups (and therefore interactions).
The team has made more than 4,600 iterations as the same test, subjected to two different groups of parrots. The first was able to learn for “imitation on behalf of third parties”:
Each specimen was allowed to observe an interaction between another ara and the human experimenter, which taught her five different actions to be carried out at specific gestures with your hands. The second group, on the other hand, skipped a passage, and the training took place through direct contact with the human, without the possibility of observing the interaction first.
Imitation as a social parachute. The results of this double test are unequivocal: the parrots that have previously been able to observe the training phase applied to another specimen have learned more quickly, and more precisely, the five different gestures.
Those who ended up immediately in front of the human, on the contrary, put us more and not always managed to learn all five. According to the authors, this is the first demonstration of “Third-Party Imitation” in a non-human animal.
As for the various “because” (because these parrots, for example), the study explains that the are golablù They live in numerous and very fluid groups, so it often happens that a newcomer must quickly learn the habits of his new group:
Doing it by observing the actions of the “veterans” is simpler (and perhaps even less dangerous) than throwing yourself directly into the fray, with the risk of taking some false social step.
And since these parrots are not the only animals to have such a complex social life, it is possible (if not almost safe) that other species are also able to learn new behaviors even without a direct teaching.
