Birds living in urban environments are smarter than their country counterparts, says a group of ornithologists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

In a first-ever study to find clear cognitive differences in birds from urbanized compared to rural areas, Jean-Nicolas Audet from McGill University’s Department of Biology and co-authors report key differences in problem-solving abilities among city birds versus rural birds.

The team assessed problem solving, color discrimination learning, boldness, neophobia, and immunocompetence in the Barbados bullfinch (Loxigilla barbadensis), an endemic bird in the Caribbean island-nation Barbados, wild-caught from a range of differently urbanized sites.

“The island of Barbados shows a strong range of human settlement, there are some very developed areas but also mostly left untouched, thus providing an excellent environment to study the effects of urbanization,” Audet explained.

The scientists found that not only were birds from urbanized areas better at innovative problem-solving tasks than bullfinches from rural environments, but that surprisingly urban birds also had a better immunity than country birds.

“Birds from urbanized areas were better at problem solving than their rural counterparts, but did not differ in color discrimination learning,” the scientists said.

“They were also bolder but, surprisingly, more neophobic than rural birds.”

“Urban birds also had an enhanced immunocompetence, measured with the phytohemagglutinin antigen.”

“Since urban birds were better at problem-solving, we expected that there would be a trade-off and that the immunity would be lower, just because we assumed that you can’t be good at everything,” Audet said.

“It seems that in this case, the urban birds have it all.”

According to the team, urbanization is one of the key situations that can help scientists understand how some animals respond positively to anthropogenic change.

The team’s findings were published in the March-April 2016 issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology.

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Jean-Nicolas Audet et al. 2016. The town bird and the country bird: problem solving and immunocompetence vary with urbanization. Behavioral Ecology 27 (2): 637-644; doi: 10.1093/beheco/arv201