SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY LEARNING 

 PERIOD IN BIRDSi 



W. H. Thorpe 



In the last 3 or 4 years much new work on the early learning period in 

 birds has been accomplished so I propose in today's talk to attempt to 

 survey some of these recent advances and to consider what lines of 

 investigation now appear to be the most promising. I also wish to discuss 

 the relation of modern developments in the study of bird learning to the 

 general body of knowledge and theory concerning the flexible and 

 individually adaptable behaviour of animals. 



The acquisition of new actions and the development ot skills by the 

 process of trial and error learning has recently been the subject of a good 

 deal of investigation. A type of behaviour which is particularly con- 

 venient for detailed analysis of this kind is the feeding technique shown by 

 a number of species of birds, particularly tits [Paridav), when presented 

 with a piece of food suspended by a thread. Individuals of many species of 

 birds will sooner or later learn to pull up the food, the pulled-in loop being 

 held by the foot whilst the bird reaches with its beak for the next pull. In 

 goldfnichcs {Carduelis carducUs) at least this behaviour has been known 

 from tunc immemorial. Goldfinches are so adept at the trick that they 

 have for centuries been kept in special cages so designed that the bird can 

 subsist only by pulling up and holding tight two strings, that on one side 

 being attached to a little cart containing food and resting on an incline, 

 and that on the other a thimble containing water. The keeping of birds in 

 this type of cage was so widespread in the sixteenth century that it gave 

 rise to the name 'draw-water', or its equivalent, in two or three European 

 languages. Nor was this type of aviculture restricted to Europe. Dr Dillon 

 Ripley tells me that Parus variiis in Japan is kept as a cage bird and is 

 taught many fancy tricks, such as the solving of little puzzles, running a 

 betting bank, and pulling up strings. No doubt all of these depend upon 

 trial and error learning of the kind described. 



Those of us who have seen this kind of performance by wild birds at a 

 bird table, as can so easily be done with the great and blue tits (P. major 



^ Part of this work has been pubhshcd in Nature, 182, 554-7, 1958, and part in Ibis, lOi: 

 337-353. 1959- Full references will be found in these two papers and in "Current Prohleim oj 

 Auiiihil BclhU'iour" cd. W. H. Tiiorpc and O. L. Zangwill, Canib. Univ. Press, i960. 



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