puzzle box

Danielle Trussoni’s “The Puzzle Box” received the award for mystery/thriller.

Her experiment showed that birds were able to learn how to liberate food from a puzzle box by copying the solution from others -- confirming that the original milk-raiding birds had also been passing on their thieving ways to their flock.

Using an automated puzzle box system they developed, the team designed an experiment to test this immigration hypothesis.

Each group was provided a tutor which was trained to access food from a puzzle box by either pushing the door left or right.

Not only did immigrants see that residents were opening the puzzle box in a new way, but in some groups, the newcomers also discovered that residents scored a superior reward by doing so.