Is bin-opening in cockatoos leading to an innovation arms race with humans?

Foraging innovations can give wild animals access to human-derived food sources¹. If these innovations spread, they can enable adaptive flexibility² but also lead to human-wildlife conflicts³. Examples include crop-raiding elephants⁴ and long-tailed macaques that steal items from people to trade them back for food⁵. Behavioural responses by humans might act as a further driver on animal innovation^2,6, even potentially leading to an inter-species ‘innovation arms-race’⁷, yet this is almost entirely unexplored. Here, we report a potential case in wild, urban-living, sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita; henceforth cockatoos), where the socially-learnt behaviour of opening and raiding of household bins by cockatoos⁸ is met with increasingly effective and socially-learnt bin-protection measures by human residents.