Are animals raised by humans smarter than wild animals?

Recent research shows that animals will be smarter when staying with humans for longer. Not only that, they often come up with many creative ideas.

The team from the Veterinary University in Vienna (Austria) has built a continuous challenge model for cockatoos to compare the intelligence between wild and home parrots.

The parrot makes a challenge to get food - (Image: Goffin Lab).

Previously, similar experiments on other animals raised by humans for a long time such as chimpanzees, dogs, cats . showed that pets tend to be smarter than wild animals thanks to human training. training.

This time with parrots, the hypothesis of many scientists is that wild birds are smarter due to exposure to many environments and experiencing many different challenges in nature.

To verify, the team built 20 models, each "door" has a different challenge requiring parrots to pass such as seesaw, ferris wheel, lifting objects, pressing buttons, . to get food.

As a result, birds that live with humans are smarter than wild birds. When faced with a challenge, domestic birds pay close attention to strange details, complex machines because they know from experience that it could be a human system for them to feed.

20 challenges for cockatoos in an intelligent measurement experiment - (Image: Goffin Lab)

Many parrots, even though they are only with them for a short time, find that the one-time feeding couple has learned from experience to perform well in 20 challenges.

Dr Theresa Rössler - Vienna University of Veterinary University, member of the research team - said most of the parrots when in the challenge have approached faster. They also find smarter ways of solving challenges, even different from the "workarounds" the team has set out.

For example, with the challenge of opening an iron wire to lock the door to get food, many parrots find it easy to open the door hinge. The team believes that parrots are capable of observing and learning ways to solve problems through human contact.

Parrot's attitude is also different. Rössler said up to 10 of the 11 parrots are excited about the challenge to get food. On the contrary, only 3 out of 8 wild parrots really care about the challenge, the rest are indifferent.

The research is published in the prestigious scientific journal Scientific Reports . Rössler also questioned the team in the near future, such as why the parrots did not care so much about the challenge, and if all were equally interested, whether the results would change.