Generous African Grey Parrot Shares Food Tokens With Another Parrot So They Can Both ‘Buy’ Walnut Treats
A fascinating study conducted by animal physiologist Di(C)siri(C)e Brucks and zoologist Auguste von Bayern involves a pair of African grey parrots who had been trained to exchange tokens for food. Wanting to see if the birds would share, the entire lot of tokens was given to only one bird. The parrot with the tokens saw that the neighboring parrot didn't receive anything and began passing some over to the neighbor's side, allowing them to buy a walnut. This type of altruistic behavior had not been seen with birds ever before.
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