In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines around the world after creating his own artificial beak. He didn’t stop there. Scientists reported Monday that Bruce has become the alpha male of his group.
And he did that by learning to joust.
The new study, published in Current Biology, is an important addition to a small but growing number of observations showing how resilient animals with disabilities can be, said Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna who was not involved in the study.
“The link between innovation and disability in animals is important but understudied,” she says.
Bruce is a 13-year-old kea that lives only in New Zealand. These seagull-sized parrots live together in groups known as circuses, which can number in the dozens.
Kea were considered pests until the past few decades because they can attack sheep when their regular food supply is lacking. In the 1980s, the New Zealand government paid bounties for dead care and helped reduce the number to less than 5,000.
Although the bounty is gone, Keas still faces significant threats. For example, a curious bird tries to steal food from a mousetrap and gets injured. Scientists suspect it happened when Bruce was young. When they found him in the wild, his entire upper beak had been broken off.
Bruce’s injuries amounted to severe disability. The kea uses its long, hooked beak to groom itself, keeping its feathers clean and free from dangerous parasites. Birds also use their beaks to dig for seeds and other food on the forest floor.
“Losing that would probably make basic survival in the wild very difficult,” Auersperg says.
Researchers took Bruce to Willowbank Wildlife Sanctuary, where he joined the care of more than a dozen other animals living in captivity. As he grew up, scientists visited his circus to study bird intelligence.
The Keas turned out to be inquisitive problem solvers. And it looks like they had a lot of fun along the way.
“They are always very cheerful,” says Alex Taylor, director of the Animal Mind Lab at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “They want to play with your shoelaces or steal your pen.”
Dr. Taylor once saw two kea land on a floating log. Together they figured out how to turn it into a seesaw. fun.
Bruce was eager to participate in the scientists’ experiments. However, the lack of an upper beak made it difficult to perform simple tasks such as pulling strings.
But the parrot has found another way to impress. In 2021, researchers noticed that he regularly picks up pebbles, places them between his tongue and lower beak, and shoves them into his feathers.
After watching this mysterious routine over and over again, researchers realized that Bruce had invented a new way to clean his feathers.
It was clearly a trick Bruce had come up with himself. No other kea species in the reserve used pebbles for grooming, and this behavior had never been observed in this species before.
Last year, the Blues provided a second surprise.
Male keas fight for dominance. Those who lose fall to the bottom of the circus hierarchy and are stressed as a result. Alpha males end up having the lowest stress levels.
To measure stress in the sanctuary’s nine male keas, Dr. Taylor and colleagues analyzed certain hormones in their blood. Surprisingly, the male care with the lowest level of care was Blues.
“We never expected him to be the top male,” said Alexander Grabham, a zoologist at the University of Canterbury and author of the study.
This surprise prompted Dr. Grabham and colleagues to take a closer look. After reviewing the video, we see that Bruce has risen to the top with a new style of care fighting.
Male keas usually bite around each other’s necks. Blues don’t bite. Instead, he learned to joust. He lunges at the enemy and slams his lower beak into the enemy’s body.
Jousting proved to be a smart strategy. Bruce consistently won fights and other males followed him. One of the perks of being an alpha male was that Bruce got to visit the bird feeder first.
“No one jumped him or tried to move him,” Dr. Grabham said.
After enjoying his meal, Bruce allows the subordinate male to preen and clean his lower beak. “And when Bruce is done, he’ll kick around and do a little jousting and say, ‘Okay, that’s it, it’s over,'” Dr. Grabham said. “To me, that’s a sign of superiority.”
There are some questions about Bruce’s ascension that are impossible to answer. For example, Dr. Grabham and his colleagues cannot tell when Bruce will find his way to jousting and become the new Alpha.
“We hadn’t tracked his control and stress for the past 12 years to see his journey,” Dr. Taylor said. “We weren’t really looking for that, so we didn’t really connect the dots.”
Sarah Turner, a primatologist at Concordia University in Montreal who was not involved in the study, said research on other species supports the idea that animals with disabilities sometimes come up with innovative ways to survive and thrive.
In Dr. Turner’s own research, he observed that Japanese macaques with deformed hands learned to walk on two legs rather than on four legs. And men with disabilities seem to fit easily into the social hierarchy, sometimes reaching the top.
Dr. Turner said humans are the cause of many animal disorders, from congenital deformities caused by environmental pollution to injuries caused by trapping, electrocution and road accidents.
As humans put more pressure on the animal kingdom, scientists need to learn more about how animals adapt to obstacles, she added. “The world is now a living laboratory.”
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