The Clever Cockie Research Project

Big day yesterday, CleverCockie lab member Lisa Fontana @lisafontana.bsky.social finished the last day of data collection for her PhD, completing an experiment on social learning in cockatoos. Congratulations Lisa! 🎉

Our first Tham Lab photo with Megan Outram and Grace Jones @biologyanu.bsky.social

🐸 We want to understand how chytrid fungus infects frogs using structural biology, nanobodies & genetic engineering

Excited to be branching out to fungal diseases

#chytrid #nanobodies #fungus #effector

One of the rarest birds in the world finds a city sanctuary in Hong Kong Yellow-crested cockatoos have found a sanctuary in Hong Kong's urban parks, but they face housing troubles similar to their human neighbors.

Another clever cockie: apnews.com/article/hong...

Caught mid fluff! Little corellas are a smaller species of cockatoo (Cacatua sanguinea) that often join sulphur-crested cockatoo flocks, especially in urban areas.

That's the spot...! A trio of allopreening cockies engaging in some social bonding at our field-site, captured by @elliearose.bsky.social.

If you'd like to learn more about when and why cockies allopreen, check out a recent paper by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Saturday morning cockatoo

HK scientist puts hope in nest boxes to save endangered cockatoos Above the teeming shopping streets of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay district, a fight to save one of the world's most endangered species is unfolding high in the branches of a decades-old cotton tree.

Hong Kong scientist puts hope in nest boxes to save endangered cockatoos phys.org/news/2025-08...

Lab member Lara Blumenstiel is currently wrapping up the last stage of training before moving on to cognitive testing. Sydney's clever cockies are playing her custom puzzle-box like pros!

‘Mind-blown’: scientists discover sex reversal in kookaburras and lorikeets with cause unknown Almost all of the ‘sex discordant’ birds were genetically female but had male reproductive organs, study finds

#BiologyLetters in @theguardian.com | Prevalence and implications of sex reversal in free-living birds: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

📣 Interested in cultural evolution and artificial life? Call for abstracts for our upcoming workshop at @alife2025.bsky.social. Accepted abstracts will be presented as flash talks, and are not archival. Deadline is the September 12, w/ rolling acceptance. Details: sites.google.com/view/planetx... 🧪

It’s #NationalScienceWeek! 🐦

Our HANZAB encyclopaedia is now online & free – covering every bird ever recorded in Aus, NZ & Antarctica. Updated with the latest taxonomy & threat statuses, it’s a game-changer for bird lovers & researchers alike

🔗 hanzab.birdlife.org.au

#BirdLifeAustralia #Birds

Students of ASSAB! You can now apply for the 2025 student research grants here: www.assab.org/grants-2025

We have two grants available for up to AUD$2500, we will also select two highly commended applications.

Deadline: August 31st 2025

An extremely clever cockie, or one regretting their life choices?

Spotted at our Canberra field-site by @lisafontana.bsky.social, it's first time we've seen a sulphur-crested cockatoo successfully fledge 3 chicks! The usual is 2 eggs laid, resulting in 0-1 chicks.

Museomics and Salvaged Feathers Piece Together the Evolutionary History and Conservation Genomics of the Elusive, Critically Endangered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) The Night Parrot is a critically endangered nocturnal bird of Australia's arid zone. The species was “lost” for most of the 20th century until its rediscovery in 1990. Extant populations are now know....

An exciting & important new paper by @annamkearns.bsky.social & co-authors: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.....

Conservation genomics of the previously assumed to be extinct night parrot, showing recent connectivity between populations ~2000 km apart, but very low effective population sizes.

Leading the way comes at a cost for feathered friends Leading the way comes at a cost for feathered friends Like humans, animals can become stressed when trying to lead a group of peers in a particular direction, a new study from The Austral

🐤 Like humans, animals can become stressed when trying to lead a group of peers in a particular direction, says @scienceanu.bsky.social

From biologging to conservation: Tracking individual performance in changing environments | PNAS Under an accelerating biodiversity crisis, increased urbanization, habitat fragmentation, and climate change require new approaches to assess conse...

From bio-logging to conservation 🔽

New paper by an @animaltracking.bsky.social dream team

@diegoellissoto.bsky.social @anflack.bsky.social @arispeshkin.bsky.social Timm Wild, Hannah Williams, @teagueo.bsky.social

@cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why hello there! Sunrise behind some early birds at one of our Sydney field-sites.

No, it's not a sulphur-crested cockatoo, but it is a clever cockie!

Masters student Miro van den Berg is using light-weight BLE-tags to study the urban lives of the gorgeous gang-gang cockatoo. You can read more here: sites.google.com/site/lucymap...

The crest tends to get all the attention, but cockies also have incredibly expressive chin feathers, aka the 'fluffenchops' - combined with the head tilt, this expression says "curious but relaxed and content".

You want us to do what now? The first steps of Lara training Sydney's wild cockatoos on how to play a touchscreen task...

We've found that it take about 2-3 weeks for cockies to go from these first steps to using the full apparatus, which we can then use to test individuals' cognitive abilities.

Two paper just out from the #clevercockieproject!

@julia-penndorf.bsky.social reveals how cockies play politics when deciding who to aggress: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
&
@barbaraklump.bsky.social describes a new 'drinking innovation':
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Undergraduate student Lee in field

PhD student Shefali in field

Our central Sydney 2025 field-season has begun! Lee (undergrad intern) and Shefali (PhD student) are marking cockies with temporary paint dots as a first step to measure cognitive performance on standardised tests.

Hi Bluesky! 👋 We're the account for the Clever Cockie Project, researching culture and cognition in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos. We'll post updates from the field, along with our recent results and publications. You can find more, including our current team, here: www.clevercockies.com/the-team