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

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

#71

Post by makeitdouble »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #58
crooked-v wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on top of that, can obviously recognize parrots in the video thumbnails.

It’s incredible that a 90 second video of someone with a pet parrot and an iPad is more illuminating then the average paper…

This is truely the magic of the internet.

The earnestest researcher can't go survey every parrot in every home all around the world, but parrot owners can casually expose what their own parrots do.

Reminds me of the Twitter thread where a mite researcher discovers a new species in a photo posted by an amateur photographer.

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

#72

Post by anymouse123456 »

ideasphere wrote: post #22
superkuh wrote: post #17

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.

I thought the exact opposite from a UX angle. Swiped down and it started scrolljacking and then I read the line about touch screens helping us “to snag Lightning deals on Prime Day” and it was enough for me to just stop reading and close the tab.

The article looked really interesting, but the scrolljacking made me leave immediately.

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

#73

Post by Jensson »

simonklitj wrote: post #32
tombert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am human (at least as far as I am aware), though I guess with the advent of LLMs that's becoming less evident. It seems obvious to me, though I might be redefining "smartness" in a very human-centric way. It seems pretty clear to me that humans are the smartest in terms of analytical ability; you hear things in the media all the time like "crows are smarter than 7 year old humans", but I think that really depends o…

Is this more of a limitation of our ability to communicate with the animals? If we could talk intelligibly with a crow, maybe we could teach it? Conversely, if our communication with a 7-year-old child were limited to the level we achieve with crows, could we teach the child and know for sure that they understand it?

> could we teach the child and know for sure that they understand it?

Yes, children aren't born knowing languages so you teach the child the language and then you can see it understands it. You don't need to share a language to teach language. We haven't been able to teach any animal language at even 4 year level, so animals at least doesn't have the same level of language intelligence as humans do.

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

#74

Post by miriam_catira »

082349872349872 wrote: post #33
tombert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am human (at least as far as I am aware), though I guess with the advent of LLMs that's becoming less evident. It seems obvious to me, though I might be redefining "smartness" in a very human-centric way. It seems pretty clear to me that humans are the smartest in terms of analytical ability; you hear things in the media all the time like "crows are smarter than 7 year old humans", but I think that really depends o…

> are all equal to the same amount This may be modern schooling at work. I've heard that one motivating factor for the ancient egyptian's strange-to-us mathematical style ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction ) is that when they divvied stuff up, they needed to do it in a way that was more obviously fair than we do. Example: we have four workers on our gang and need to pay them with 3L of beer and 3 loave…

Oh this is by no means limited to ancient times, try giving any two young children the same amount of food, but cut into different sized pieces - smaller cuts result in more pieces than the larger cuts... Guaranteed meltdown. :)

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

#75

Post by miriam_catira »

ethbr1 wrote: post #29
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To parrot the above, if you've never seen a goose in Florida get pissed off at a parked car bumper, you haven't lived. They're hilariously persistent in their anger.

There was a corporate office park I encountered once that had a pond, and they had swans in it. The swans entertained themselves by chasing office workers to and from the carpark every morning.

... in my experience, if waterfowl come at you hissing, just look bigger and hiss back - as long as it's smaller than a swan.

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

#76

Post by simonklitj »

Jensson wrote: post #73
simonklitj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this more of a limitation of our ability to communicate with the animals? If we could talk intelligibly with a crow, maybe we could teach it? Conversely, if our communication with a 7-year-old child were limited to the level we achieve with crows, could we teach the child and know for sure that they understand it?

> could we teach the child and know for sure that they understand it? Yes, children aren't born knowing languages so you teach the child the language and then you can see it understands it. You don't need to share a language to teach language. We haven't been able to teach any animal language at even 4 year level, so animals at least doesn't have the same level of language intelligence as humans do.

You are going beyond the constraints, “if our communication with a 7-year-old child were limited to the level we achieve with crows.”

We know we are able to teach children language because we have shared modes of communication through which we can observe their learning; speaking, writing, hand gestures.

> You do not need to share a language to teach a language

True, but I would argue that you need to share a mutually intelligible mode of communication.

How would you teach (and know that they have understood it correctly) the concept of monetary denominations to a 7-year old child if you were limited to communicating on the level you can with a crow? I have no idea, and would probably give up. But this does not necessarily tell us anything about the intelligence or capacity for learning language in the child, it tells us only of the gap in communication that we cannot bridge.

> so animals at least doesn’t have the same level of language intelligence as humans do.

This does not necessarily follow. What follows is that humans are not able to teach animals human language on the same level as they are able to teach humans.

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

#77

Post by owlninja »

Swizec wrote: post #50
Culonavirus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That parrot looks almost exactly like a 4 year old using youtube. I've heard people describing parrots like hyperactive 4-5 year olds so many times... it's nice to see that in practice lol. It must be a great pet, I could never deal with the constant pooping though. Imagine having to deal with them making a mess every 30 minutes for 70 years. How many poops even is that? Yikes.

> making a mess every 30 minutes for 70 years Oh that's adorable. I have a parrot and poops aren't even the biggest mess he makes. They love to fling food. And shredding. And throwing everything you hold dear. And even a tiny 120g parrot like mine is strong enough to open cupboards and drawers.

What is the upside?

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

#78

Post by gopher_space »

miriam_catira wrote: post #75
ethbr1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To parrot the above, if you've never seen a goose in Florida get pissed off at a parked car bumper, you haven't lived. They're hilariously persistent in their anger.

There was a corporate office park I encountered once that had a pond, and they had swans in it. The swans entertained themselves by chasing office workers to and from the carpark every morning. ... in my experience, if waterfowl come at you hissing, just look bigger and hiss back - as long as it's smaller than a swan.

The main problem is that people get pissed if you treat a city swan like a farm swan, just punting it out of the way or throwing it by the neck.

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

#79

Post by 8338550bff96 »

Loughla wrote: post #25
numbers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, so impressive that the parrots knows how to minimize the video and browse for other stuff.

I don't know if that is sarcastic, but it is legitimately impressive to me. That parrot looks almost exactly like a 4 year old using youtube. It's sort of astonishing to think about. From both the fact that the parrot can figure it out, and that the function and use of youtube is so intuitive to users that a parrot can learn it.

We had a Red-and-green macaw when I was young. He bit a lot and required a lot of attention. My dad was friends with the local zoo's head falconer and he took him in and let his teenage son train him. I visited him a few year later and he was wicked smart. He could play Super Nintendo Aladdin

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

#80

Post by Swizec »

owlninja wrote: post #77
Swizec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making a mess every 30 minutes for 70 years Oh that's adorable. I have a parrot and poops aren't even the biggest mess he makes. They love to fling food. And shredding. And throwing everything you hold dear. And even a tiny 120g parrot like mine is strong enough to open cupboards and drawers.

What is the upside?

They’re pretty fun and super affectionate! It’s like having a little curious buddy who wants to do everything with you, learns your routine, communicates what’s on their mind, always warns you of scary things and sounds, viciously attacks anything or anyone they think might be a danger to you, and absolutely holds a grudge if you do something upsetting.

And they’re smart enough to remember people for many years and learn how to behave differently around different people based on past interactions.

Oh and you can throw them like a boomerang.

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