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Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

news.northeastern.edu

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Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#11

Post by jjtheblunt »

amatecha wrote: post #6
abruzzi wrote: post #3

My pet Mitred Conure (Leonard) loves to mess with my iPad while I'm reading. On the other had, Leonard >hates< my iPhone. If he's on my shoulder he'll engage in a agressive display waving around and violently biting my shirt. If the phone is close enough to him he will attack the phone. I'm an extremely light phone user so its not like I ignore him when using the phone, but I do expect it is the size makes it competi…

I have a family member with a cockatoo (goffin) and it's generally afraid when someone has a phone in their hand. Pretty strange, we haven't figured out exactly what the issue is. Placing the phone down on a table to play some music seems fine, but it seems like once the phone is in someone's hands and moving around, maybe it resembles some kind of predator?? No clue!

Polarization of the screen might look super psychedelic (especially if moving) to a bird’s more advanced optical system?

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#12

Post by tocs3 »

tombert wrote: post #7

It feels like increasingly, we're finding that humans are not quite as "uniquely intelligent" as we thought. Don't get me wrong, humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously, but it does seem like we greatly underestimated the intelligence of a lot of others. Birds like parrots and crows in particular continue to impress me when I see them solving increasingly elaborate puzzles, and figuring out how to ope…

> humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously

I think this is correct but not obvious. It could be we (I am assuming you are also human :) are just the most ambitious.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#14

Post by I_Am_Nous »

krunck wrote: post #10

"Seventeen completed the study; three dropped out after showing slight signs of aggression or a lack of interest during the training period. " Avian rage-quitting? So it's not just humans... I feel better now.

Rage quitting or issues with rage WHEN quitting? I can imagine a game-addicted bird might get upset if you turn off the tablet or remove them from the gaming area. Similar to a toddler throwing a tantrum if you turn off a movie they are watching.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#15

Post by nicklecompte »

tocs3 wrote: post #12
tombert wrote: post #7

It feels like increasingly, we're finding that humans are not quite as "uniquely intelligent" as we thought. Don't get me wrong, humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously, but it does seem like we greatly underestimated the intelligence of a lot of others. Birds like parrots and crows in particular continue to impress me when I see them solving increasingly elaborate puzzles, and figuring out how to ope…

> humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously I think this is correct but not obvious. It could be we (I am assuming you are also human :) are just the most ambitious.

Orcas are smart enough to give each other distinct names and seem to understand the concept of verbs/nouns when identifying human words[1]. They could very well be smarter than us, but they'd never dominate the planet technologically: their flippers have no evolutionary path to developing fingers and thumbs.

[1] Some people point out that we've never learned orca language but they've learned ours. This is true, but it's also true that orca scientists have never kidnapped human children and intentionally tried to teach them orca language. So it's more of a poetic comparison than a scientific one.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#16

Post by mutagen »

My African Grey will engage a bit with the sampler app Keezy. I thought I had video of it on YouTube but I can't find it, maybe I never uploaded it.

https://keezy.net/

Thought the sounds would engage him but he's very entertained by the center black button expanding menu on that app. Now I need to make a bird game...

He likes both our phones and our tablets, mostly to chew on but he sometimes engages in weird social ways. He'll let me scratch his head while it is resting on the phone but otherwise not, only my wife gets to scratch his head usually. It isn't a usual one-person-bird bonding thing, I can otherwise interact with him normally, train him, and hang out with him but the head scratching is her time unless there's a phone there.

He also likes my stylus/Pencil but mostly because there's a nice soft tip to destroy on the end.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#17

Post by superkuh »

What a wonderful site design. Everything, even the video clips, work without javascript execution. This is a site that a parrot itself could load and use.

On that topic, I recently saw a video of flocks of parrots that learned to manually spin a water pump windmill by flying up and sitting on the top of it on windless days.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#18

Post by 082349872349872 »

tocs3 wrote: post #12
tombert wrote: post #7

It feels like increasingly, we're finding that humans are not quite as "uniquely intelligent" as we thought. Don't get me wrong, humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously, but it does seem like we greatly underestimated the intelligence of a lot of others. Birds like parrots and crows in particular continue to impress me when I see them solving increasingly elaborate puzzles, and figuring out how to ope…

> humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously I think this is correct but not obvious. It could be we (I am assuming you are also human :) are just the most ambitious.

https://archive.org/details/mobot31753002909064/page/84/mode...

(1658) > Loqui vero eos easque posse, Iavani aiunt, sed non velle, ne ad labores cogerentur : ridicule me hercules.

"Indeed, the Javanese say that [the Orang-utans] are able to speak to them, but they do not want to, lest they should be forced to labor (pull the other one it's got bells on)"

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#19

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

I_Am_Nous wrote: post #14
krunck wrote: post #10

"Seventeen completed the study; three dropped out after showing slight signs of aggression or a lack of interest during the training period. " Avian rage-quitting? So it's not just humans... I feel better now.

Rage quitting or issues with rage WHEN quitting? I can imagine a game-addicted bird might get upset if you turn off the tablet or remove them from the gaming area. Similar to a toddler throwing a tantrum if you turn off a movie they are watching.

Birds totally experience rage at inanimate objects like humans. If an objects get in their way or doesn't behave the way they want for long enough, they'll start smacking it. Vicious and intelligent things.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#20

Post by Lalabadie »

> Last year, the team showed a group of parrots how to video call one another, finding that the birds both overwhelmingly enjoyed the activity and could make the calls themselves, when given the option.

My heart! There's a separate article dedicated to it: https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-vid...

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