Researchers tried to attach tracking devices to magpies for a study. But the magpies helped each other to remove them — a possible sign, the scientists say, of altruism in the birds. Birds in ...

When Dominique Potvin and her team set out to test a new technology for tracking birds, they didn’t think they were entering into an interspecies game of one-upmanship. Instead, Potvin, an animal ...

The magpies showed their smarts by helping one another remove tracking harnesses that scientists carefully placed on them. By Anthony Ham The Australian magpie is one of the cleverest birds on earth.

When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to ...