Calling someone “a real cuckoo” is not a compliment. Calling someone a sulfur-crested cockatoo, however, may soon be.

Native to Australia, these crow-sized parrots have been caught on video in a western suburb of Sydney doing something no type of bird has ever done anywhere before. They drink from a water fountain.

No, not the decorative type you find in a park that shoots up water like a geyser — and where any bird brain would know enough to perch on the lip and take a drink. But the type of human drinking fountain with a handle that needs to be turned and held down in order for water to flow.

In an article for Science, Jack Tamisea explains the video was shot by a group of researchers led by Barbara Klump as a result of what she first witnessed in 2018. Cockatoos perched on a fence and waiting as long as 10 minutes for a turn to hop atop a human drinking fountain.

Initially, the behavioral ecologist at the University of Vienna thought the fountain might serve as a sort of parrot watchtower, a good spot to spot approaching predators, like eagles and falcons. But as Klump continued to watch, she saw the cockatoos were actually gripping the handle, turning it, and then leaning forward to sip the now-flowing water.

The behavior “shocked” her and led her to return with a research team and a video recorder. Over the course of 44 days, they taped a total of 525 attempts of cockatoos trying to drink, 41 percent of which were successful.

It’s important to note that nearly six in 10 attempts were unsuccessful because only 500 meters away from the fountain is a creek. So why do the cockatoos still try to turn the water fountain handle to quench their thirst?

Klump suggests they might simply prefer the taste of the fountain water. While that could be true, I prefer the explanation Klump’s co-author Dr. John Martin gives in an article published in The Guardian and written by Petra Stock.

That after foraging for food for much of the day — often by dumpster diving in the nearby urban environment — this is fun for the cockatoos. A great way to have “a bit of a relax.”

Now unless you’re a transplanted Aussie, you’re not saying that phrase. But my question to you is, do you do it?

Do you have a way to forage through — as if you were a large green trash receptacle that could be hoisted and emptied — the garbage that gets dumped on you? Do you do something that’s fun to do to counteract the stress that inevitably comes your way each day?

If you don’t, start. It could only help your health.

A study published this June in Biology Letters, for instance, has found a link between unmitigated stress and the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Before you learn how researchers the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine) reached that conclusion, though, it’s worth noting that the correlation between having fun and better physical health hasn’t been as well established as the one between it and mental health. A study published in September 2009 issue Psychosomatic Medicine that investigated the connection between fun and both, however, found an association between scoring well on the Pittsburgh Enjoyable Activities Test and lower blood pressure, cortisol levels, waist circumference, and body mass index.

Moreover, those who scored well on the test felt that way. They believed they were more physically capable than those who recorded low scores.

What the Mount Sinai researchers discovered in their study, according to the press release about it, is that there’s a circuit in the brain that connects one part of it to the liver, and that in stressful situations that one part of it, the amygdala, signals to the liver to release “a burst of energy” to deal with the stress. Which is a good thing — unless the stress is chronic.

The study found chronic stress creates “an excess of glucose production in the liver” leading to “long-term elevations in glucose [that] can cause hyperglycemia and increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.”

Increasing the significance of this finding is that prior to it, scientists believed the amygdala only controlled the behavioral responses — not any bodily responses — to stress. Which is why it’s good for you to do what Dr. Sarah Stanley, co-author of the Mount Sinai paper, suggests: address the “social determinants that contribute to stress.” Doing so could very well lessen your risk of diabetes while improving your overall health. So take it from Dr. Stanley, Dr. Martin, and a flock of sulfur-crested cockatoos.

Don’t be a cuckoo.

Find a way to have some fun each day.

And if you can do so through exercise, so much the better. Then you’ll be (with all apologies to animal right’s advocates everywhere but keeping with today’s motif) killing two birds with one stone.