Magpies team up to sabotage a study

A group of Australian magpies teamed up to sabotage a study into how they co-operate in the wild, said The Times. Researchers fitted the birds with lightweight tracking devices to gather data on their movements and social interactions. But the study was thwarted “within ten minutes” when the birds started to remove the GPS tags from each other. It took only a few hours for most of the trackers to be removed and there were none remaining three days later, said the paper.