Of the many thousands of species of birds on Earth, only about 25 are known to do something special with their food—they dunk it in water before eating.

Nobody knows for sure why the birds do it. It might moisten foods for easier eating. Or it might wash away nasty-tasting chemicals. The behavior is seen most often in super smart species, like crows. And now it’s been observed for the first time in a bird called the Australian magpie.

"We were very, very lucky to see it. It was entirely by chance." University of Cambridge zoologist Eleanor Drinkwater.

"And so, on a day to day basis, we'd get up and we would essentially spend hours and hours following these different families of magpies around the place, and tempt them towards us and then see how they reacted when we presented them with different foods."

The researchers offered an adult male magpie a mountain katydid, an insect that's presumed to be distasteful. It’s thought that the insect defends itself against being gobbled up by secreting a bitter substance from underneath its wings as well as by vomiting a bitter-tasting cocktail.

"This one individual comes up and takes the katydid that we presented and kind of waddles off, and then goes and kind of plops it in a little stream that was behind us. We were kind of watching this together and looking at each other, like, this is a bit interesting. Haven't seen this before."

But then something even more surprising happened. The magpie dropped the wet katydid on the ground and hopped away. A few minutes later, a juvenile magpie approached, dunked the katydid once again in the puddle, and then gobbled it up. The observations were described in the journal Australian Field Ornithology. [E. Drinkwater et al., A novel observation of food dunking in the Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen]

Drinkwater thinks what they saw might be an example of social learning in this species.

"To us, it kind of appeared to be the case that it could be food washing. That would make sense within the context of this particular insect.”

While the behaviors are hard to interpret, she says that she and her team reported these observations in hopes that other researchers might investigate the behavior further.

"We were just very, very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to see this interesting behavior. And in the current day and age, there are loads of people with iPhones and cameras who I'm sure have also captured all sorts of weird and wonderful animal behavior, which might not be common knowledge to the scientific community."

And unless those folks think to share their photos and videos with experts, who knows what discoveries are out there remaining to be made.

—Jason G. Goldman

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

中文翻译：

在地球上成千上万种鸟类中，只有大约25种人知道他们的食物会做些特别的食物 - 他们在进食前将它们浸泡在水中。


没有人确切知道为什么鸟会这样做。它可能滋润食物，更容易进食。或者它可能会洗去令人讨厌的化学物质。这种行为最常见于超级聪明的物种，如乌鸦。现在，这是第一次被称为澳大利亚喜鹊的鸟类。


“我们非常非常幸运地看到它。这完全是偶然的。”剑桥大学动物学家Eleanor Drinkwater。


“所以，在日常生活的基础上，我们起床了，我们基本上会花费数小时的时间跟踪这些不同的喜鹊家庭，并诱惑他们走向我们，然后看看他们在我们呈现时是如何反应的不同的食物。“


研究人员向成年雄性喜鹊提供了一种山羚羊，这种昆虫被认为是令人反感的。据认为，昆虫通过从翅膀下面分泌一种苦味物质以及呕吐一种苦味的鸡尾酒来防御被吞噬。


“这个人出现了，拿走我们提出的k and和一种蹒跚的吵架，然后继续把它放在我们身后的一条小溪里。我们有点看着对方，看着对方，就像，这有点有趣。以前没见过。“


但后来发生了更令人惊讶的事情。喜鹊把湿漉漉的k k扔在地上然后跳了下去。几分钟后，一只少年喜鹊走近，再一次在水坑里扣了k，然后吞了起来。澳大利亚野生鸟类学杂志对这些观察结果进行了描述。 [E. Drinkwater等，澳大利亚Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen食物扣篮的新观察


Drinkwater认为他们所看到的可能是这个物种中社会学习的一个例子。


“对我们来说，它似乎可能是食物洗涤。这在这种特殊昆虫的背景下是有意义的。”


虽然行为很难解释，但她说她和她的团队报告了这些观察结果，希望其他研究人员可以进一步研究这种行为。


“我们非常非常幸运能够在合适的时间出现在正确的地方，看到这种有趣的行为。在当今这个时代，有很多人使用iPhone和相机，我肯定也抓住了所有这些各种奇怪而奇妙的动物行为，这可能不是科学界的常识。“


除非那些人想与专家分享他们的照片和视频，谁知道还有什么发现仍然存在。


-Jason G. Goldman