Pet parrots prefer live video-calls

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-pet-parrots-video-pre-videos.html

by agiacalone • 2 years ago

81 29 2 years ago

Shermanium• 2 years ago

"animal internet" sounds like a future bubble. who funded this besides U Glasgow? imagine having to pay another monthly bill for pet internet!

idle_zealot• 2 years ago

Apparently the parrots got along fine using FB Messenger to call each other, so rather than a distinct "animal internet" it's more "animals on the internet". I suppose that's what happens when you invest effort in designing UI that a toddler can use.

simcop2387• 2 years ago

This is why years ago I bought the domain www.omeowgle.com that I never got something working for at the time. I was going to setup a video call system for my family to call my cat (and maybe eventually some friends cats too). Now I'm just hosting some social media for my cat on the fediverse there. https://www.omeowgle.com/@buzz

throwaway81523• 2 years ago

Omegle for parrots would be called parrot-dice right?

Freebytes• 2 years ago

I have totally wanted to build out "pet VR". Put an animal on a type of treadmill in a virtual world and let them run around. The major issue with the idea is that dogs rely on smell quite a bit so it would likely not be a decent replacement experience for them versus going outdoors.

throwway120385• 2 years ago

"animal internet" is no where near as interesting as the idea that pet parrots can recognize the images on a tablet as another parrot that they are interacting with in real-time.

a1369209993• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't they? Humans can recognize black and white images on a 1960s-era videophone prototype as another human they are interacting with in real-time, and it's not like parrots have any significant difficulty recognizing other parrots in general.

TomWhitwell• 2 years ago

“Birds don’t see well on the old-fashioned CRT screens—their flicker fusion rate is much faster than ours” https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/28/magazine/cockatoo-p...

ceejayoz• 2 years ago

Passing the mirror test is pretty rare in the animal world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test). Birds aren't widely good at it. They may have similar challenges in tying a depiction of something to the 3D physical real object.

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

One of our foster dogs would bark and growl at dogs on TV. I am pretty sure she would have interacted with them if the TV dogs would have responded to her.

astura• 2 years ago

This appears to be a different study about parrots making video calls: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35664219

Same researchers though, or at least appears to be.

andrewstuart2• 2 years ago

Someone should make "Omegle for Parrots" and let them hang with random parrots from around the world online whenever they feel like it.

parpfish• 2 years ago

tangent:

i remember when chat roulette went viral in ~2010 and it introduced the general public to the 'video chat with random strangers' app concept. It was everywhere. My grandparents knew about it.

but now whenever people talk about 'video chat with random strangers' they always use omegle as the reference point. I don't recall it ever breaking into the public consciousness.

did everybody forget chatroulette? what happened?

mikestew• 2 years ago

did everybody forget chatroulette?

After the first couple of penis shots, I'm sure ChatRoulette users have done everything they can to forget ChatRoulette.

Having never used it, did Omegle somehow avoid this fate? If so, how?

spondylosaurus• 2 years ago

Omegle had text chat, too, which I would guess had a lot more users than the video chat (= more name recognition overall). Plus it's easier to say and type :P

liotier• 2 years ago

On the Internet of parrots, they really mean it when they give you the bird !

abruzzi• 2 years ago

Kind of off topic, but my pet parrot (a Mitred Conure) gets off-the-hook loud whenever I try to watch Hitchcock's The Birds. The movie has a lot of bird noises (and strangely enough an electronic music score thats not really audible as a score--it just makes the squawks denser) but I don't know if he's trying to engage or mimicking.

yareally• 2 years ago

My parrots (Green Cheek and a Budgie) can't stand hearing other bird calls. Freaks them out (even the ones in the console/pc version of WingSpan[0]). A majority of bird calls in the wild are territorial and it seems to freak them out the most in the Spring when their hormones are at their highest, so it's likely related.

I haven't thought too far into it, but I imagine they freak out more when it's a hawk/falcon call than a songbird.

[0] https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/

cainxinth• 2 years ago

I’m a big fan of Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist who records the sounds of natural environments. I often listen to his stuff while I’m working. The recordings that feature a lot of bird calls can set the local birds in my neighborhood off. They will all start chirping back.

1-6• 2 years ago

I’m curious now, can a parrot tell the difference between a real parrot and an AI generated one?

ehnto• 2 years ago

Different birds of the same species can have different outcomes I have seen, anecdotally. Two cockatoos, one thinks a plush toy cockatoo is a bird and another correctly identifies it as a toy.

Another observation I have had is bird on a screen are also hit and miss, but sounds are a bit more consistently responded to. But bird are temperamental full stop, and barely respond the same way consistently, so it's tough to say if they are not responding because they don't think it's real, or if they are just not interested.

Grimblewald• 2 years ago

theyre a lot like people in the spread of cognitive ability you can expect to see and how a lack in some areas can be made up for in others. Most animals are like that in my experience. For example, my cat has zero issues with mirrors, realistic cardboard cutouts etc. despite being super violent towards any other real cat, even if it is behind a window or a digital screen she hasn't figured out is a screen yet (which she checks by looking behind the screen to see if it is see-through both ways). She loves playing with you, but won't play if you aren't into it and she can tell. She refuses to play with things if you aren't participating in the game, for example loves chasing a feather on a string, but put the rod into a motorized unit? the moment she realizes you aren't holding the stick / watching she's out. Not just that, if you tried to deceive her into believing you were part of it, she'll sulk the rest of the day and, for lack of a better word, be catty. Other cats I've met? it varies, some are also super smart and understand causality etc. while others barely manage to not drown on their own spit.

The problem is, that much like it is hard to have a singular measure for intelligence in humans, it is not really feasible in animals of a given species either.

Some parrots will enjoy screen time, others wont. Some are more social, others less. Some will like phone calls, others wont. Just like people.

scotty79• 2 years ago

Pet parrots given the choice to video-call each other or watch pre-recorded videos of other birds will flock to the opportunity for live chats, new research shows.

Completely opposite than humans.

galaxyLogic• 2 years ago

I think this says that parrots prefer to communicate rather than just listen.

luckyou• 2 years ago

It reminds me a joke. At the pet store:

- I'd like to buy a talking parrot. - Sure, but just two. - Why only two? - Because one speaks Spanish and the other translates.

Pet parrots prefer live video-calls

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