- Pet parrots learned how to video call
- Scientists taught the parrots how to call each other
- The pets love to talk to each other
In the cutest scientific moment ever, pet parrots learned to video call each other. Scientists taught bird pals how to communicate, and they fell in love with talking on the phone—or should we say squawking?
The idea came from realizing that pet parrots may be lonely when living singly. In the wild, parrots are social creatures and live in flocks. They are constantly communicating with their bird pals, so the research lines up.
Research from multiple universities in 2023 found that pet parrots who learned how to video call had positive experiences. One of the universities involved in the research, Northeastern University, had one of the parrot moms speak about her experience.
“She came alive during the calls,” the parrot mom said.
See the full story here.
What happened with the pet parrots on the video calls?
As we said, the idea started as more of a study to see how the parrots would respond. Scientists recognized that the parrots may be lonely at home, so encouraging them into a social setting helps them thrive.
To start the study, they found willing owners and parrots from Parrot Kindergarten, an online training school for the birdies and their owners.
The training process
Starting with touching a bell, owners would teach the parents where to touch. Then they stepped it up to teaching them to touch a photo of another parrot on a screen, which triggers a video calling feature. Owners would use specific parrots’ names so their pets would understand who they were contacting. This introduced the birds to each other.
Over those two weeks, the birds made 212 video calls!
Those involved said the calls were only five minutes long and were stopped if the birds became aggressive or disinterested.
18 birds dropped out of the experiment. During this time, owners assessed the parrot’s ability to assess interactions on-screen. Included in this analysis was their response time to the other birds being on-screen, which would be the biggest sign of interest.
They also analyzed their responses to birds going out of frame or following the bird across the screen.
Later, the second phase came, which was the 2-month Open Call phase. Here, the birds used their bell to indicate they wanted to make calls to their friends. Again, the birds would have to touch the bell and then select the photo of the bird they wanted to talk to.
In this phase, the birds made 147 calls with encouragement. Here is the video of the process.
What were the findings about the pet parrots?
In conclusion, it was found that parrots can trigger calls and make use of their free will. Furthermore, the number of calls made depended on how many calls the birds received and how long they were. In summary, the more a bird calls, the more they receives calls in return.
Thirdly, the birds would mirror the positive social behaviors of the birds on the screen, like preening. Preening is a grooming behavior that birds do to take care of their feathers. Doing it in the presence of another bird indicates they are relaxed.
Of course, the happy and chatty birds would sing, a common happy bird behavior.
However, the study stresses the importance of ethics and how the birds need a good owner and trainer to make the experience positive.
Overall, the experiment was overwhelmingly positive for the parrots and owners.
