Palm (Goliath) Cockatoo - Probosciger aterrimus

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Palm (Goliath) Cockatoo - Probosciger aterrimus



Scientific classification 
Kingdom: Animalia 
Phylum: Chordata 
Class: Aves 
Order: Psittaciformes 
Family: Cacatuidae 
Subfamily: Microglossinae 
Genus: Probosciger 
Species: Probosciger aterrimus

Subspecies : 
Probosciger aterrimus aterrimus
Probosciger aterrimus goliath
Probosciger aterrimus macgillivrayi
Probosciger aterrimus stenolophus

The Palm Cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus), also known as the Goliath Cockatoo, is a large smoky-grey or black parrot of the cockatoo family. It is the only member in subfamily Microglossinae and the only member of the monotypic genus, Probosciger. Its unique position within the cockatoo family has been confirmed by molecular studies (Brown & Toft, 1999, Astuti, 2004?).



The Palm Cockatoo is distributed in rainforests and woodlands of New Guinea and northern Queensland, Australia. A majority of all captive-bred Palm Cockatoos are currently owned by Natalie Copp, David Roberts, Mike Tyson, Thomas Woodward and Ina Zuncke. The collective breeding program has been deemed a success by the Palm Cockatoo Conservation in Papua New Guinea.

Description
The Palm Cockatoo is 55–60 cm (22–24 in) in length and weighs 910–1,200 gm. It is a distinctive bird with a large crest and has one of the largest bills of any parrots (only the Hyacinth Macaw's is larger). This powerful bill enables Palm Cockatoos to eat very hard nuts and seeds that other species have difficulty accessing. The bill is unusual as the lower and upper mandibles do not meet for much of its length, allowing the tongue to hold a nut against the top mandible while the lower mandible works to open it. The Palm Cockatoo also has a distinctive red cheek patch that changes colour when the bird is alarmed or excited.



Behaviour
Calls
The Palm Cockatoo makes four different kinds of vocalisations, including a "hellow" call that is surprisingly human-like. There are distinct dialects throughout the species' range. It has a unique display where the bird (typically the male) drums a large branch against a dead bough or tree, creating a loud noise that can be heard up to 100 m away. It is possible that females can assess the durability of the nesting hollow by the resonance of this drumming display.

Breeding
Palm Cockatoos only lay one egg and have one of the lowest breeding success rate reported for any species of parrot (Murphy et al. 2003). Off-setting this is their very long life-span. Captive Palm Cockatoos can live up to 90 years of age, but wild Palm Cockatoos are thought to live up to 40–60 years of age (Heinsohn et al. 2009, in press). Breeding takes place inside tree hollows, which are typically like standing pipes. Fires play an important role in the destruction and creation of nest hollows. Fires allow the colonisation of microorganisms and termites which enter the tree and start hollowing out the inside. Cyclones are important in the final stage of nest hollow development.

Status
The Palm Cockatoo is still relatively common in Cape York, but is threatened there by habitat loss, particularly bauxite mining around Weipa and altered fire regimes elsewhere. Palm Cockatoos are hunted in New Guinea. This species is in high demand for the pet trade due to its unusual appearance. The Palm Cockatoo is currently evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is listed on Appendix I of CITES.

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Cockatoos Drop Sick Beats to Charm Mates

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | June 28, 2017 03:04pm ET


A male palm cockatoo (right) uses a stick to drum while it courts a female.
Credit: C. Zdenek

Music agents take note: There's an extraordinary drummer in town with impeccable rhythm, but instead of using drumsticks, this master of the beat bangs around seed pods and sticks, a new study finds.

That's because the percussionist isn't a human, but a bird: the palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus) of Australia and New Guinea. The cockatoo is the only nonhuman animal on record to rhythmically drum with a customized "sound tool," but its reason for drumming isn't so different from that of many human musicians: These feathered Romeos are looking for love, the researchers found.

During courtship, male cockatoos search for drumsticks, sometimes breaking a sturdy branch off a tree and trimming it down to about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in length. Then, the cockatoos rhythmically strike the tool against their nesting tree, wooing potential mates with a steady beat, the researchers said. 

"The female watches the male very closely, including the tool manufacture part, which demonstrates the power of the male's beak when he snips off the branch," said study lead researcher Robert Heinsohn, a professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at Australian National University.

Drumming solo

Heinsohn first came across the drumming cockatoos while studying a different parrot species on Cape York Peninsula in North Queensland, Australia, in 1997.

"I was walking through the rainforest and heard a clear tapping sound ahead," Heinsohn told Live Science in an email. "It was a beautiful male palm cockatoo striking the edge of a hollow in the tree trunk with a stick. I have never been so mesmerized by anything in nature, and swore that one day I would undertake the research necessary to understand why they do this."

Fulfilling that promise took seven years, as Heinsohn and his colleagues stealthily recorded video of the cockatoos before egg-laying season began in June and July (winter in the Southern Hemisphere). Before the researchers' study, a brief note in a 1984 bird journal was the only description of the cockatoos' rhythmic behavior, Heinsohn said. 

After collecting 131 recordings from 18 male cockatoos, the researchers used computer software to convert the recordings into spectrograms (visual displays of sound). Statistician consultations showed "beyond any doubt that these birds are rhythmic," meaning that the beats weren't random, but rather were equally spaced apart, Heinsohn said. 

Moreover, the statistical analysis showed that each of the 18 birds had its own distinct style. Some beats were faster and others were slower, and "interestingly, some males had a fast flourish of beats when they started and then slowed down to a steady beat," Heinsohn said.

These findings show that cockatoos share several key components seen in human instrumental music, including making a sound tool (the drumstick), performing in a consistent context (in this case, mating), making regular beats and creating individualistic styles, the researchers said in the study.

Other animals are known to drum, too, including rodents that stomp their feet, woodpeckers that peck, and chimps that drum their hands and feet on tree stumps. But none of these percussive sounds are rhythmic, nor do these animals make a special sound tool, Heinsohn said.

Mating scene

There's a reason why male palm cockatoos put on a spectacular show: Female palm cockatoos lay just one egg once every two years. 

During courtship, males try to attract females using different calls (screeches or whistles), movements (head bobbing or wing raising) and blushing to show they're sexually excited, Heinsohn said.

"The drumming and rhythm seems to be an extra component designed to impress the females further," he said, noting that not all males drum. However, those that do tend to put on a solo act — there aren't any "drum circles" in the cockatoo world, Heinsohn said.


A male palm cockatoo uses a stick to rhythmically woo a mate.
Credit: C. Zdenek

These avian drumming acts, some lasting up to 30 minutes, may shed light on how humans began producing rhythms, the scientists said. Perhaps drumming began as a sexual display among humans before it was used for other purposes, such as for interacting with large groups, the researchers said.

But there is one glaring difference between cockatoo and human percussive rhythm: While many humans dance to drum beats, there is no evidence that wild palm cockatoos do, the researchers said.

The study was published online today (June 28) in the journal Science Advances. 

www.livescience.com/59646-rhythmic-cockatoos-drum-to-the-beat.html

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Journal Reference:
R. Heinsohn, C. N. Zdenek, R. B. Cunningham, J. A. Endler, N. E. Langmore, Tool assisted rhythmic drumming in palm cockatoos shares key elements of human instrumental music. Sci. Adv. 3, e1602399 (2017).

Abstract
All human societies have music with a rhythmic “beat,” typically produced with percussive instruments such as drums. The set of capacities that allows humans to produce and perceive music appears to be deeply rooted in human biology, but an understanding of its evolutionary origins requires cross-taxa comparisons. We show that drumming by palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) shares the key rudiments of human instrumental music, including manufacture of a sound tool, performance in a consistent context, regular beat production, repeated components, and individual styles. Over 131 drumming sequences produced by 18 males, the beats occurred at nonrandom, regular intervals, yet individual males differed significantly in the shape parameters describing the distribution of their beat patterns, indicating individual drumming styles. Autocorrelation analyses of the longest drumming sequences further showed that they were highly regular and predictable like human music. These discoveries provide a rare comparative perspective on the evolution of rhythmicity and instrumental music in our own species, and show that a preference for a regular beat can have other origins before being co-opted into group-based music and dance.

Attached to this post: Tool_assisted_rhythmic_drumming_in_palm_cockatoos_shares_key_elements_of_human_instrumental_music.pdf (1.41 MB)

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Rare 'Ringo Starr' cockatoo faces extinction due to habitat loss in Far North Queensland

By Shelley Lloyd
Updated about 3 hours ago


PHOTO: It's estimated up to 3,000 of the Palm Cockatoos are left in Australia with the rare bird only found on the tip of Cape York in far north Queensland. (Supplied: The Difficult Bird Research Group)

A rare and beautiful cockatoo, known as the "Ringo Starr" of the bird world, could be extinct in Australia within a decade unless urgent action is taken to protect its habitat in a remote part of Queensland.
Key points:

The Palm Cockatoo, which can make its own musical instrument, is only found on the top of Cape York in far north Queensland but its numbers are declining rapidly.
Researchers fear the distinctive black bird, which is Australia's largest cockatoo, could soon disappear because its habitat is being lost to mining and land clearing.
Professor Robert Heinsohn from the Australian National University has been studying the Palm Cockatoo since the 1990s and describes it as "one of the spectacles of the bird world".
"They are magnificent large parrots and very ancient ... right from the start of the family tree for parrots ... and they are just incredibly striking to look at," he said.
"They not only look good but are the rock stars of the bird world ... making drumsticks from branches and banging out tunes to attract the bird ladies."
Professor Heinsohn said the Palm Cockatoo is the only bird in the world that uses a tool musically.
"They break off a branch and peel back the bark, they whittle it down to about 30 centimetres and they hold it in their foot and tap on the edge of their nest hollow," he said.
"They have a very good sense of rhythm and different styles of drumming signatures.
"Some males like to come in with a real fast flourish and then they slow down and get into a steady beat, other ones will have a bit of a flourish in the middle of their routine, or some will leave it to the end.
"There are 18 males that we've recorded in action trying to attract a female and they were all different."
Despite the Palm Cockatoo's best efforts to lure mates, Professor Heinsohn said a recent field trip to Queensland's far north showed the bird population had been declining at a rapid rate.
"It's going backwards quite fast, so we're very worried ... we're talking a matter of a couple of decades that we could get to the point of no return if we don't do something now," he said.
Case for endangered classification
The shy and elusive birds live in a number of colonies on both sides of the Cape, more than 10 hours' drive north of Cairns, in small bands of woodland at the edge of rainforest.
The largest flock is found in the Iron Range National Park, north of Lockhart River and there are small clusters of birds at Bamaga on the tip of Cape York and near Weipa on the western side of the Cape.
Professor Heinsohn said the birds were impossible to catch and extremely difficult to study and the best estimate of the total population left in Australia was between 2,000 and 3,000.
The striking birds are currently listed as vulnerable but Professor Heinsohn said he was making a case for that to be changed.


PHOTO: Researchers say the Palm Cockatoo is currently listed as vulnerable but they're building a case to have it reclassified as endangered. (Supplied: The Difficult Bird Research Group)

"We are compiling all the latest data and we believe they [Palm Cockatoos] should be reclassified to endangered ... we're pretty confident that we'll be making a case soon that they be moved to the endangered category," he said.
He blamed the decline on large-scale habitat loss from mining and low reproductive success.
"Our long-term field data, gathered over 20 years now, shows that the female only lays one egg every second year and that's normal, but what we're finding that those eggs are not making it, so there are very, very low rates of reproduction," he said.
"We also need to look very closely at land use and land clearing on Cape York Peninsula and go back to the drawing board and look carefully at protocols about how the land is used, otherwise we will be in danger of losing this very special bird."
A Queensland Department of Environment spokesperson said Queensland Parks and Wildlife jointly manage large tracts of Palm Cockatoo habitat in partnership with Traditional Owner groups in national park in Cape York.
"The Queensland Government has not yet received any nomination to upgrade the species' listing and encourages lodgement of nominations," the spokesman said.
"The Queensland Scientific and Technical Committee (STC) would consider such an application once received."
Palm Cockatoos are found in large numbers in Papua New Guinea where their conservation status is not under threat.


PHOTO: Researchers say the population of the Palm Cockatoo has rapidly declined in recent years. (Supplied: The Difficult Bird Research Group)

www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-08/rare-queensland-cockatoo-facing-extinction-due-to-habitat-loss/10878972