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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

This parrot taps out beats — and it custom-builds its instruments

Male palm cockatoos prefer certain types of percussion tool, which they create themselves from branches and seed pods.
Close-up of a palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus).

The courtship display of the male palm cockatoo includes raising of its crest and tapping out rhythms with its feet or a sound-making device. Credit: Getty

Many animals that make tools do so to help them forage for food. But male palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) march to their own beat: they are known to fashion sticks or seed pods into percussion instruments that they tap rhythmically against trees to court females. To study whether males prefer certain kinds of instruments, Robert Heinsohn at the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues observed the birds drumming in northeastern Australia1. They also analysed 256 drumming tools found below trees where males performed for females.

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Nature 621, 447 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02829-6

References

  1. Heinsohn, R., Zdenek, C. N., Appleby, D. & Endler, J. A. Proc. R. Soc. B. 290, 20231271 (2023).

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