an inventive Figaro showing off the device he made out of cardboard on a black background

Think ‘Birdbrain’ Is an Insult? Think Again.

Meet Figaro, a Goffin’s cockatoo. He taught himself how to turn cardboard into a tool. Birds, it turns out, are actually brainiacs.

TOOLMAKING. At a research aviary in Austria, inventive Figaro shows off the device he made to retrieve a cashew. His first tool was a piece of bamboo to rake in a pebble he’d dropped outside the aviary fence.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE GOFFIN LAB, MESSERLI RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE VIENNA
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