Bastos Amalia P M, Claessens Scott, Nelson Ximena J, Welch David, Atkinson Quentin D, Taylor Alex H
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
iScience. 2025 Mar 4;28(4):112156. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112156. eCollection 2025 Apr 18.
Putatively rare behaviors like tool use are difficult to study because absence of evidence can arise from a species' inability to produce the behavior or from insufficient research. We combine data from digital platforms and phylogenetic modeling to estimate rates of tool use in parrots. Videos on YouTube revealed novel instances of self-care tooling in 17 parrot species, more than doubling the number of tool-using parrots from 11 (3%) to 28 (7%). Phylogenetic modeling suggests 11-17% of extant parrot species may be capable of tool use and identifies likely candidates. These discoveries impact our understanding of the evolution of tool use in parrots, revealing associations with relative brain size and feeding generalism and indicating likely ancestral tool use in several genera. Our findings challenge the assumption that current sampling efforts fully capture the distribution of putatively rare animal behaviors and offer a fruitful approach for investigating other rare behaviors.
像工具使用这样被认为罕见的行为很难研究，因为缺乏证据可能是由于物种无法表现出这种行为，也可能是由于研究不足。我们结合来自数字平台的数据和系统发育模型来估计鹦鹉使用工具的比例。YouTube上的视频揭示了17种鹦鹉进行自我护理工具使用的新实例，使用工具的鹦鹉数量从11种（3%）增加了一倍多，达到28种（7%）。系统发育模型表明，现存11%-17%的鹦鹉物种可能具备使用工具的能力，并确定了可能的候选物种。这些发现影响了我们对鹦鹉工具使用进化的理解，揭示了与相对脑容量和食性泛化的关联，并表明几个属可能存在祖先工具使用行为。我们的研究结果挑战了当前采样工作能够完全捕捉被认为罕见的动物行为分布的假设，并为研究其他罕见行为提供了富有成效的方法。
