Macaws learn by watching interactions of others, a skill never seen in animals before

One of the most effective ways we learn is through third-party imitation, where we observe and then copy the actions and behaviors of others. Until recently, this was thought to be a unique human trait, but a new study published in Scientific Reports reveals that macaws also possess this ability.

Second-party imitation is already known to exist in the animal kingdom. Parrots are renowned for their ability to imitate human speech and actions, and primates, such as chimpanzees, have learned to open a puzzle box by observing a human demonstrator. But third-party imitation is different because it involves learning by observing two or more individuals interact rather than by direct instruction.

Scientists chose blue-throated macaws for this study because they live in complex social groups in the wild, where they need to learn new behaviors to fit in quickly. Parrots, like macaws, are also very smart and can do things like copy sounds and make tools.

To find out whether macaws could learn through third-party imitation, researchers worked with two groups of them, performing more than 4,600 trials. In the test group, these birds watched another macaw perform one of five different target actions in response to a human’s hand signals. These were fluffing up feathers, spinning its body, vocalizing, lifting a leg or flapping its wings. In the control group, macaws were given the same hand signals without ever seeing another bird perform the actions.

The results were clear. The test group learned more actions than the control group, meaning the interactions between the single macaw and the human experimenter helped them learn specific behaviors. They also learned these actions faster and performed them more accurately than the control group. The study’s authors suggest that this ability to learn from passively observing two or more individuals helps macaws adapt to new social situations and may even contribute to their own cultural traditions.

“Our findings show that third-party imitation, even for intransitive actions, exists outside humans, allowing for rapid adaption to group specific behaviors and possibly cultural conventions in parrots,” the researchers note.

A widespread ability?

The research shows that macaws aren’t just smart copycats. They may also have their own complex social lives and cultural norms, similar to humans.

While this was the first time that third-party imitation has been observed in a non-human undomesticated species, it could be more widespread in the animal kingdom. Future research could include larger groups of animals and other species, as well as test more behaviors.

© 2025 Science X Network

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