Who's a clever boy then? Why cockatoos are no bird brains Just a few, typically large-brained animals, have been found able to refuse an immediate snack for a bigger one for more than a minute. But the Indonesian cockatoo, which made headlines last year by spontaneously making and using "tools" to reach food, has now managed it, the Royal Society journal Biology Letters reports. Isabelle Laumer, of the University of Vienna, said: "The animals were allowed to pick up an initial food item and given the opportunity to return it directly into the experimenter's hand after an increasing time delay. If the initial food item had not been nibbled by this time, the bird received another reward of an even higher preferred food type or of a larger quantity than the initial food in exchange. Although we picked pecan nuts as the initial reward which were highly liked by the birds and would under normal circumstances be consumed straightaway, we found all fourteen of the birds waited for food of higher quality, such as a cashew nut, for up to 80 seconds. Dr Alice Auersperg, the study's co-author, said the Goffins acted "astonishingly like economic agents," trading off between immediate and future benefits. She said: "While human infants or primates can hold the initial food in their hands, one should also consider the birds were able to wait although they had to hold the food in their beaks, directly against their taste organs while waiting. Imagine placing a cookie directly into a toddler's mouth and telling him or her they will only receive a piece of chocolate if the cookie is not nibbled for over a minute. Another of the researchers, Professor Thomas Bugnyar, has carried out similar studies on ravens and crows. He added: "Until recently, birds were considered to lack any self-control. When we found corvids could wait for delayed food, we speculated which socio-ecological conditions could favour the evolution of such skills. To test our ideas we needed clever birds that are distantly related to corvids. Parrots were the obvious choice and the results on Goffins show we are on the right track.