Monk parakeets stand in pecking order by rank

A study about monk parakeets shows that the places they stand depend on the bird's carefully calibrated perceptions of the rank of their fellow-feathered friends.

Generally, after a week of interactions, which more frequently against those nearby in rank rather than with lower-ranked birds, newly formed groups of monk parakeets quickly perceive rank.

But how do the birds infer rank? It remains to be discovered.

The study published recently in the PLOS Computational Biology indicates how socially complex animal societies evolve and how dominance hierarchies are established.

"Parakeets appear to be able to connect the dots in their groups, remembering chains of aggression, so if A fights B, then watches how B fights C and how C fights D and how D fights E, then A will use this knowledge to adjust how it interacts with E based on all of the fights in between," according to the study's lead author Elizabeth Hobson, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.

In the study, Hobson and co-author Simon DeDeo of Indiana University and the SantaFe Institute analyzed detailed observations of aggression in two independent groups of captive monk parakeets. Each group was observed over the course of 24 days. A total of 1013 wins in one group and 1360 wins in the second group were analyzed.

The complex data shows that as individuals begin to interact and watch the fights of others, they accumulate knowledge of who wins in fights against whom. Once this knowledge is present, the birds use it refine their own behavior, for instance, they focused their aggression by choosing individuals with whom they might be closely matched. You can see that the aggression becomes more strategically directed.

From above we can learn that it's the bird's careful observation of how the other birds interact, which is an act of cognitive complexity, that determines rank amongst these socially precocious birds.

The study allows people to start to understand the interaction between social and cognitive complexity and to begin to compare what we see in the parakeet groups to other socially complex species like primates. That may be of great significance.

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