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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

#91

Post by Voultapher »

zvmaz wrote: post #81
amatecha wrote: post #5

Made me think of this video where a parrot is watching YouTube videos it likes, changing to different ones, and seeming angry when ads (or the owner lol) interrupt its video-watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZSNhJcKFf4

Incredible! So much that is fascinating about non-human animals. I can't resist but think that there's a deep similarity between us, and them. One that we even don't suspect. Reminds me of Tom Regan's words: "Animals have a past, a story, a biography. They have histories. Mink and bears, elephants and dolphins, pigs and chickens, cats and dogs: each is a unique somebody, not a disposable something."

We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?

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

#92

Post by spaceman_2020 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #66
Lalabadie wrote: post #20

> 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...

And they had preferred friends! It's truly awesome because their owners could help improve their quality of life with just a cheap tablet and the service fee.

Their owners could improve their quality of life by simply not keeping them

Parrots are too smart and too social to be kept in captivity

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

#93

Post by katbyte »

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…

It’s easier to kill animals and destroy their habit when you think less of them and presume them to have little to no intelligence or emotion (or so little it doesn’t count)

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

#94

Post by jbotz »

nicklecompte wrote: post #15
tocs3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

Also, all the aquatic animals have one rather serious obstacle to developing an advanced/technological society: no way to make/use fire. Personally I think the only thing that really categorically distinguishes humans from other smart animals is that, the use of fire. Yeah, our language abilities are impressive too, but they may have fully developed after we already started using fire, telling stories around the campfire at night. Fire is what makes it possible for us to make use of more energy than we can physically consume; humans are best defined as the ape that mastered fire.

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

#95

Post by yungporko »

Voultapher wrote: post #91
zvmaz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible! So much that is fascinating about non-human animals. I can't resist but think that there's a deep similarity between us, and them. One that we even don't suspect. Reminds me of Tom Regan's words: "Animals have a past, a story, a biography. They have histories. Mink and bears, elephants and dolphins, pigs and chickens, cats and dogs: each is a unique somebody, not a disposable something."

We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?

of course we're wrong, we can easily prove that enslaving and exploiting them is a bad thing. we know animals are capable of suffering and we know animals do suffer in the conditions we create for them, it's as simple as that.

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

#96

Post by Voultapher »

yungporko wrote: post #95
Voultapher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?

of course we're wrong, we can easily prove that enslaving and exploiting them is a bad thing. we know animals are capable of suffering and we know animals do suffer in the conditions we create for them, it's as simple as that.

Why does it matter that they are capable of suffering? This is a serious question. When it comes to morality invariably when you dig down deep enough, all of it is based on human made assumptions. That doesn't invalidate discussions about morality, we just have to be aware that it is built on a subjective foundation.

And for the record, I personally suggest a vegan lifestyle, because I believe exploiting animals is morally wrong.

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

#97

Post by qohen »

kibwen wrote: post #30
ethbr1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube UX: "We have this one weird cohort that's responding abnormally to all our UI A/B testing..."

Only until enough parrot owners find out about this, at which point parrots overtake the human population of Youtube and the metrics start catering to them.

Leading to something a bit like this, then? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31XFe2g98RU

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

#98

Post by xattt »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #90
amatecha wrote: post #5

Made me think of this video where a parrot is watching YouTube videos it likes, changing to different ones, and seeming angry when ads (or the owner lol) interrupt its video-watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZSNhJcKFf4

Always weird to me how parrots and crows evolved to be so much smarter than the rest of the birds There is a small park right outside my house and I constantly see crows just clowning around on other birds. I’ve seen them harass eagles just for fun and casually take food from pigeons.

Was this the form of intellectual superiority that Homo sapiens flaunted when they were among “dumber” apes?

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

#99

Post by brabel »

Voultapher wrote: post #91
zvmaz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible! So much that is fascinating about non-human animals. I can't resist but think that there's a deep similarity between us, and them. One that we even don't suspect. Reminds me of Tom Regan's words: "Animals have a past, a story, a biography. They have histories. Mink and bears, elephants and dolphins, pigs and chickens, cats and dogs: each is a unique somebody, not a disposable something."

We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?

Most animals in the wild live very tough, short lives and have high likelihood that they be killed and eaten by predators, so they live every second of their lives in fear. I am not convinced that when animals are grown by humans in appropriate conditions (i.e. not overcrowded sausage factories), given all the food they need and able to "enjoy" (this is a human emotion, but perhaps they have an analogous "feeling" when out in nature?) nature while being protected, it's really wrong. We are part of nature and our physiology made us capable of eating meat, just like all other predators. Do you believe all predators are "morally wrong", or only humans?? Denying our nature never seems like a very wise thing.
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