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Body Awareness in Goffin's Cockatoos

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is widely used to assess self-awareness, but its reliance on vision may limit its suitability for cross-species comparisons. A complementary approach is the body-as-obstacle (BAO) paradigm, which tests whether individuals recognize their own body as a causal impediment to solving a task. Although BAO has been applied in mammals, it has not previously been adapted for birds. Here, we tested 15 Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) in an avian BAO task in which subjects had to retrieve and pass an object to an experimenter. In the test condition, the object was attached to the mat on which the bird stood, requiring subjects to step off the mat to succeed; two control conditions were unattached and attached-to-ground. A pre-test controlled for stepping off due to mat movement or discomfort. Cockatoos passed the pre-test (mean success ± SE: 99.4 ± 0.6%) and stepped off markedly more often in the test condition (97.8 ± 0.9%) than in the unattached (0.7 ± 0.3%) or attached-to-ground control (39.1 ± 3.9%). These findings provide the first application of the BAO paradigm in birds and support the use of comparative, multimethod approaches to body awareness.

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