NOVA

Birds, one of nature's most amazing success stories.

There are thousands of different species,

found everywhere on earth.

They're beautiful...

inspiring...

and mysterious.

But could they be smart?

People commonly think of birds as small-brained

and not worth looking at.

But in the last couple of years,

our view of bird minds has been revolutionized.

Scientists are putting birds to the test.

Can they solve problems?

Can they cooperate?

Are we friends again?

Do they feel emotion?

New research shows just how clever they can be.

Every day with these birds is interesting and different.

It's always fun and exciting and new.

And perhaps they're more like us

than we could have ever imagined.

We're starting to realize

that the simplest explanation

may be that they're seeing the world in much the same way

that we do.

Exploring the "Bird Brain"

right now on "NOVA."

It's picnic time at a small zoo in the English countryside,

and visitors are about to meet a very special parrot.

His name is Rio,

and after three I want you to shout "Rio" as loud as you can.

One, two, three.

Rio!

Rio is a ten-year old scarlet macaw

from the South American rain forest

who's been trained as an entertainer.

Can you show everybody your wings?

Come on then, Rio.

There we go.

Rio will fly on cue.

Give him a big round of applause... well, done, Rio,

lovely flying today.

And he's a talented gymnast.

- Yeah, he's showing off today. - Really Rio, definitely.

But today he's going to try something

that's not in his repertoire of show tricks.

It's called a string pull test.

Rio's favorite food... a peanut... Is dangling on a string.

He'll have to pull the string up to get the peanut.

Rio has not been trained to do this.

In fact, he's never seen this puzzle before.

And it isn't a skill a parrot normally needs.

If you're a parrot in the wild, you probably

will never come across a treat dangling from a piece of string.

So it had to figure out what to do.

That implies these birds have the ability

to visualize a puzzle...

To visualize a physical action,

and then to foresee the consequences of that action.

Rio can see the string, and the peanut he wants.

At first, he's not interested.

But after a few minutes... And a little encouragement...

He figures out what to do.

And once he's figured it out,

he can repeat it without trial and error.

When a bird pulls a string and secures food in that way,

it demonstrates a level of insight into the problem.

It has worked out the mechanics and the process beforehand.

And that's not something we used to think

birds really did much of.

For many decades, scientists thought

that most of a bird's behavior was ruled by instinct.

In the 1930s, the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz

conducted some of the earliest studies on the lives of birds.

Working with geese,

he saw that they learn from the moment they're born.

It's called imprinting...

They follow the actions of the first thing they see...

Which is usually their mother.

But Lorenz showed that even this most basic instinctive behavior

can be learned in a new way.

These geese imprinted on him.

The significance

of the imprinting experiment was it showed that

there were behaviors such as following

that the behavior itself is instinctive.

But the cue, what do you follow, that's learned.

Lorenz spent years trying to tease out the difference

between instinct and intelligent behavior.

In one set of observations, he discovered that

a goose sitting on a nest reacts immediately

if an egg rolls away, she brings it back to the clutch.

It looks like an intelligent action.

But if the egg is removed, she still continues the movement.

Her brain is responding instinctively

to a simple trigger.

Even when the egg is replaced with a cube,

she brings it back into the nest.

When the bird continues the motion

even after the egg is gone, that implies

that the behavior is more or less instinctive.

The bird isn't consciously thinking through

the consequences of its actions.

Even what looks like an incredibly complicated skill...

Flying... Requires very little thought.

There are many aspects of flying that are controlled

without ever sending signals to the brain.

And they're controlled right by feedback

from the feathers to the spinal cord,

and control how the wings are then moved to change flight,

without thinking about it at all.

Huge groups of birds can fill the sky

with beautiful and coordinated patterns of flight.

This spectacle seems like it would require

high levels of intelligence,

but it's mainly instinctive.

So is everything a bird does ruled by instinct?

Or do they have what we would consider intelligence?

Meet Bran... A hand-reared young raven...

And his owner, bird trainer Lloyd Buck.

Well, this is Bran, and he's a three-year-old raven.

We've had him since he was about ten days old,

so he's what you call

"complete social imprint" on humans,

but he's particularly bonded with me.

We share a very, very close bond.

To keep Bran busy, Lloyd will sometimes

give him a problem to solve.

Here's one he tried a few months ago,

in Bran's aviary, where there's a birdbath.

A piece of food is trapped inside a plastic bottle

that's been crushed.

First, Bran adds water.

That alone doesn't free the food,

so he swishes it around so that liquid carries the food

out of the bottle top.

That's my boy!

Good boy!

Lloyd didn't teach Bran how to solve this problem.

He just gave him the challenge

and let him figure it out on his own.

So, we've presented him with that problem,

and through his own intelligence and problem-solving abilities,

he worked out to use his own water,

what he had around him, to his advantage,

which I think shows a lot of intelligence.

Ravens like Bran and parrots like Rio

belong to two families of birds that are widely considered

to be among the smartest species.

Ravens are part of the crow family.

Crows live almost everywhere on earth,

with an average lifespan of ten to 15 years.

They have a starring role in many classic myths

as cunning animals who bring bad luck.

Parrots, on the other hand, have been loved

as pets by humans for thousands of years.

They also thrive in many different environments,

and they can live to be 80 years old.

Their long life span gives them plenty of opportunity

to learn new things,

and that may be one reason why they seem so smart.

At the Haidlhof Research Station near Vienna,

scientists are studying the intelligence

of many kinds of crows and parrots.

What makes our center unique is the fact that we have

multiple bird species here at the same time,

and it is very interesting to compare them.

They're working with a type of parrot

called a kea, from New Zealand.

This is John, and he'll be trying

a much harder string-pull test.

First, peanut butter is hidden in a small tube

and tied to the end of a string.

Right away this is a more complex challenge,

because the treat is out of sight,

instead of hanging right in front of him.

To complicate things further, now there are two strings,

but the second one just has a stick on the end.

John goes straight to the correct string

where the reward hangs directly below him.

Next, the two strings are crossed.

So now the reward is no longer directly below the attachment

to the right string.

And John has to decide which string to pull.

When the string is anchored here,

and the reward is here, and a string is anchored here,

and the reward is here, the position of the reward

is actually opposite to where the bird might expect it to be.

So it implies an additional layer of processing.

John immediately pulls the right string.

Most of the kea parrots who try this puzzle need some practice,

but even with the rewards and strings swapped around,

they learn to pull the right one most of the time.

If they pull a string that is offset from the food,

this really implies that they have a plan.

And that's a real key,

they're able to plan this out mentally, work out the steps,

and employ it correctly when they see the task.

Compared to other birds,

parrots and crows have large brains