Moves and counter-moves: Sydney’s “Battle for the Bins” is a classic example of cultural evolution in the form of an interspecies innovation arms race that involves “learned behavioural change in two populations/species”, according to the study’s authors.Īlthough Dr Klump and her team originally began by studying the cockatoos ( ref), they wanted to better understand the human side of this escalating arms race. This has led people to watch what their neighbors are doing so they can adopt any wheelie bin protection devices that have proven effective. “This observation actually inspired the current study.”īut the crafty cockatoos are devising new ways to defeat the increasingly sophisticated rubbish bin protection measures that people are inventing. “When I first started investigating bin-opening behaviour, I was very surprised by all the different measures that people have developed to protect their bins from cockatoos”, said the study’s lead author, behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Anti-bird spikes to prevent cockatoos from flipping a wheelie bin lid open.
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