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Parrots Using Video Chat to Keep in Touch
Some birds even formed long-distance friendships.
© Rebecca O Connor
Knowing how clever parrots are, researchers wanted to see how they’d respond to another parrot saying hi on a tablet or phone. After being trained how to start a call, many parrots chatted amiably on calls and stayed on for the maximum amount of time. Some birds even seemed to develop friendships, choosing to stay in touch even after the experiment ended.
BirdNote®
Parrots Using Video Chat to Keep in Touch
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
Video chats help us keep in touch when we’re far apart. And now, some birds are in on the fun, too. Knowing how clever parrots are, researchers wanted to see how they’d respond to another parrot saying hi on a tablet or phone.
Researchers taught the parrots how to signal they wanted to make a call by ringing a bell, so that they could decide for themselves to participate.
[Parrot rings bell]
Human: Do you wanna call a friend? Would you like to call a friend?
The bird’s caretaker would show the parrot a screen with photos of birds to choose from by touching.
Human: You wanna call Rosie?
Then the person would start the call.
Human: Do you wanna say hi?
[Parrot makes a high-pitched call]
Human: Where is she? Yes! There she is!
[Parrot makes a high-pitched call]
Human: Yes, that’s Rosie, yes!
Many parrots chatted amiably during the call, behaving much like wild birds keeping in touch with their flock. They often stayed on the phone for the maximum allowed five minutes. Some birds even learned skills from each other and seemed to form lasting friendships, continuing to call each other after the experiment.
The researchers think that video chats could help enrich the lives of birds in captivity. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have a friend to squawk on the phone with.
[Parrot makes a high-pitched call]
For BirdNote, I’m Ariana Remmel.
Support for BirdNote is provided by Ellen Blackstone, of Edmonds, Washington — and generous listeners around the world.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.
Experimental recordings from Kleinberger et al., 2023. “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, Article No. 534, Pages 1–16, doi: 10.1145/3544548.3581166.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote September 2023
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# parrot-02-2023-09-08 parrot-02
Conor Gearin
Writer