Smart magpies are thanks to nurture more than nature

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-03-13 11:01

Australia; NSW; WA

We all know how smart Aussie magpies are, but Aussie researchers wanted to test whether those smarts were mostly inherited, or something the bird brains learned from their flock. The researchers tested maggies and their fledglings' ability to learn which coloured lids food was located under and found very little evidence that they inherited this ability. Instead, they found that the fledglings raised in larger groups passed the test in fewer trials, suggesting their cognitive abilities are impacted by the environment (nurture) more than their genetics (nature).

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Heritability of cognitive performance in wild Western Australian magpies

Royal Society Open Science

Cognition is the process by which animals collect, retain and use information from their environment to guide their behaviour. Although the factors underpinning the evolution of cognition are often investigated, less research has focussed on the inheritance of cognitive traits, particularly in wild populations. Here we estimate the heritability of cognitive performance in a wild population of Western Australian magpies by comparing mother and offspring performance in an associative learning test. We find little evidence that cognitive performance is heritable, rather performance is influenced by the social environment, whereby individuals raised in larger groups solve the cognitive task faster.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Western Australia, Macquarie University

Funder: E.M.S.: Research Training Stipend Scholarship awarded by the Australian government, a Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment awarded by the Ecological Society of Australia and an Ada Jackson Irwin Street Commemoration Award. A.R.R., A.T. and B.J.A.: Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP200100566). B.J.A. was also supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE220100096).

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