Kea are also very good at learning from one another. One test of this involves a “tube removal” task. The inside of a small tube is smeared with a reward—butter, a big favorite for kea—and the tube is placed at the bottom of a long upright pole. To get at the treat, the kea must slide the tube up over the top end of the pole, which requires climbing up the pole while pushing the little tube with its bill. Kea accomplish this in just a few attempts, even if they’ve never seen the setup before. But when one kea watches another, it emulates the first bird’s strategy and completes the task at
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