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Your cell phone rings, showing a video call, so you click on the phone and find that it is actually a parrot that is calling you.

This happened in real life when a group of researchers at Northeastern University taught parrots to make video calls.

In fact, this is purposeful, because people find that domestic parrots without bird companions are too lonely and their mental health is very worrying. Maybe. Can video calls make them less boring?

Like cats and dogs, smart parrots are a common pet. There are more than 20 million pet parrots in the United States, and half of the world's parrots are kept in captivity. They have a strong learning ability, some have a vocabulary of 1000 words, some can play various puzzles, and even dance.

Smart parrots learn a lot of skills. | Wiki however, many people may forget that the parrot originally lives in the wild in the tropics and subtropics. It is a gregarious animal and has a lot of interaction with its bird companions, such as building nests together, singing together, or fighting for targets. In other words, parrots are birds that need social life, but nowadays, a large number of parrots are used as pets and live alone in cages.

A narrow cage may not be the ideal life scene for a parrot. Wiki as early as 2003, a study reported the abnormal behavior of caged parrots. The researchers found that caged parrots exhibit repetitive, constant and useless behaviors, such as pacing repeatedly, swinging in circles, aggressive behavior, and even self-harm behavior such as plucking one's own hair. The researchers believe that these behaviors may indicate that parrots have poor mental health in a lonely environment.

The bored parrot in the cage did exactly the same behavior six times in a row. | Ref. 2. Therefore, in this recently published study, scientists have found a way to reduce the loneliness of parrots with a lower cost of "video calls".

Studies in the last century have shown that birds can look at screens, some pigeons can recognize faces in photos, and smart parrots can even operate touch screens. So in this experiment, 18 parrots were recruited, equipped with tablets or phones that were more suitable for birds, and began training in "video calls".

The training is divided into two stages. the first stage is to let the parrot learn to ring the bell, which will be used as a "video request". When the parrots ring the bell, their owners will know that the pet parrots want to make a phone call and then open the bird "address book" for video calls. Next, the parrot will choose one of its bird friends and ask its owner to dial the phone.

Smart parrot dialing online | reference 1 in the three-month experiment, the birds made a total of 147 video calls. When parrots talk to their friends on the phone, it is almost like a human friend talking on the phone. 59% of the parrots talk for more than five minutes, and their behavior during the call is also recorded by their owners.

Your parrot friend address book 🈶️ | reference 1 A keeper said that TA's parrot (code name P2) was addicted to video calls, talked to its good friend P1, and invited P1 to play with it. Even when P1 "dropped" off the screen, P2 wanted to keep ringing the bell and calling P1 back. There is also a cold parrot that seems to only like its friend P9 and is willing to fly back only when P9 appears on the screen.

It's fun to talk to your friends on the phone! | seven birds in youtube even played games remotely. One bird showed its toys to its companions, while others danced together, waving their wings, learning new pronunciations, and even singing together. One of the owners also said that in the company of friends, the parrot learned things that its owner had not taught it for a year.

Overall, the parrots who learned to communicate online with their friends became more active. Not only did they learn new foraging and flying skills in the video, but they also became less anxious and appeared calmer and more confident. Even when getting along with their owners, the parrots are happier.

Parrots that make video calls can also be more active near their owners. Giphy, video calls really seem to be an effective way to make domestic "empty nest" birds happier. In addition to this method, many bird owners are also using the richness of the environment to create a better environment for their pets, such as foraging games, all kinds of toys, and even puzzles or puzzles. For domestic animals, important social life is also needed.

Who wants to sleep and eat Giphy during the outbreak, the penguins unwatched in the zoo were so lonely that the keepers arranged bubble machines for them. The San Diego Zoo has installed a human-bird voice interaction system. Orangutans at the Atlanta Zoo played interactive Mini Game on a projector. And dogs can really play games on the Internet!. The light of science and technology also shines on animals.

Orangutans can play some tablet games | reference 3 Resources:

[1] Kleinberger, Rebecca, et al. "Birds of a Feather Video-Flock Together: Design and Evaluation of an Agency-Based Parrot-to-Parrot Video-Calling System for Interspecies Ethical Enrichment." Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2023.

[2] Garner, Joseph P., Cheryl L. Meehan, and 喜悦 A. Mench. Stereotypies in caged parrots, schizophrenia and autism: evidence for a common mechanism. Behavioural brain research 145.1-2 (2003): 125134.

[3] http://www.beckyscheel.com/work/digital-enrichment-for-orangutans

[4] Hirskyj-Douglas, Ilyena, and Ander é s Lucero. "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog... Unless You're Another Dog." Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2019.

[5] Kleinberger, R é becca, et al. "Interspecies interactions mediated by technology: An avian case study at the zoo." Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020.

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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