The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

The classic experiment demonstrating that birds can learn about threats from fellow birds was conducted by German zoologist Eberhard Curio. Curio showed that European blackbirds learned to regard a harmless bird as a predator by observing other birds mobbing it. He put one “teacher” blackbird in a box and showed it a species that was a real threat—a model of a little owl—which evoked a powerful mobbing response in the teacher bird. At the same moment, he showed another blackbird—the “observer,” or student—a model of a bird that’s harmless to blackbirds, a noisy friarbird. The student bird could see both the teacher and the friarbird but not the little owl. Almost instantly, it learned to fear, and mob, the friarbird. Remarkably, Curio showed that this recognition and fear of an enemy could be culturally transmitted from bird to bird, along a chain of up to six individuals. Bird number six in the string mobbed the friarbird with a ferocity equal to the original teacher bird—a superb example of social learning.