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After a couple of months of setting out cameras I soon learned why. I have the utmost respect for kea and genuinely believe that it is an animal of extreme intelligence, certainly more so that the general population believe. If you had suspicions that somebody was trying to catch you doing something that you supposedly shouldn’t have been doing, of course you would remove or destroy the cameras observing you. In a similar way the kea did just that. Handling destruction is something that can be overcome – developing more robust housings and attachments is simple enough. What I find it difficult to deal with is missing memory cards! While trying to gather the evidence of kea tool use three cameras were totally destroyed, with the memory card always missing. This is especially frustrating when you know the card would hold all the evidence. So the kea appeared to understand the importance of these cards in exposing their mischievous behaviour, and prevented any evidence being recorded for over two years. Finally a system was developed that was almost kea proof. Similarly the traps had also been modified to make them kea proof… we later found out that these were ‘almost kea proof’. I say ‘almost’ because kea have a determination to attempt to ‘solve’ a challenge for a much longer time than I had previously assumed. In the final collection of evidence it seems that the kea filled a 16GB memory card with over two hours of mucking about with the trap. With such time invested there is no doubt that kea proofing something is almost impossible.
Once the footage was finally collected and the memory cards were actually left untouched I was quite surprised with what I had managed to capture. In summary, tool use was very obvious, however it was the two hours of manipulation and stick retrieval which was something I never expected to capture. Seeing the sticks in the traps provided obvious evidence that the kea (as expected and now confirmed) were doing this, however there was no knowledge of how this was being done, how many kea were involved and also how long it was taking. It was also not known whether it was a series of ‘intelligent’ steps undertaken to achieve the final result. When I finally looked at the footage everything that I was curious about was answered. Firstly, yes, it was the kea (I was quite relieved as, if it were possums or stoats doing this, there would have to be a radical re-evaluation of pest control), secondly the kea were far more determined than I had ever experienced. In the past I had observed kea persistently
ripping rubber off cars or breaking twigs off trees, but to see the kea return almost every day to try again with seemingly different strategies to get the sticks in the trap – this was quite a surprise. The one thing that ‘wowed’ me the most was the fact that the kea were purposely adapting the sticks to fit into the trap. If a stick was inadequately sized the kea would toss it away like a dissatisfied child and collect another it considered more appropriate. This footage has been used to finalise my research of tool use in kea in the wild and it is my intention to undertake further study to examine how this behaviour is founded, and whether it is transferred from adults to juveniles. My overriding intention for this study was to raise the profile of the kea as a bird of extreme intelligence. I believe we certainly have a contender to those other birds who have also mastered tool use. In the coming months my research titled ‘What intentional tool use do Keas display in natural environments?’ will be published.
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Photos: Mat Goodman