Brotherly Love

People and other great apes are known for their willingness to help others in need, even strangers. Now researchers have shown for the first time that some birds – and specifically Grey Parrots – are similarly helpful.

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‘We found that Grey Parrots voluntarily and spontane-ously help familiar parrots to achieve a goal, without obvious immediate benefit to themselves,’ says study coauthor Désirée Brucks of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany.

Parrots and crows are known for having large brains relative to the size of their bodies and problem-solving skills to match. For that reason, they are sometimes considered to be ‘feathered apes’, explain Brucks and study coauthor Auguste von Bayern.

However, earlier studies showed that despite their impressive social intelligence, crows don’t help other crows. In their new study, Brucks and Von Bayern wondered: what about parrots?