Parrots Seem To Enjoy Video Calling Their Friends In Order To Combat Being Lonely

Martin - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only
Martin - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only

Parrots living in captivity often suffer from a lack of stimulation and entertainment, but video calls with other parrots can help ease the boredom and loneliness.

Recently, a study has found that when pet parrots are given the option to participate in live video calls with their friends or watch pre-recorded videos, they will choose the live chats over pre-recorded content.

This suggests that parrots may be able to tell the difference between the two and that they have a preference for interacting with other birds on live calls.

The study was led by researchers from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom and Northeastern University in the United States.

They gave tablet devices to nine parrots and their owners for the experiment. In the first meeting, the birds were introduced to each other online.

Over the course of six months, there were 12 sessions that added up to a total of 36 hours. Six of them were live chats, and the other six were pre-recorded videos.

The researchers observed that the parrots spent more time on the digital devices when a live call was going on and seemed more engaged.

Overall, they spent 561 minutes on live calls and 142 minutes on the pre-recorded videos. They also chose to initiate live calls to other birds more frequently.

According to 55 percent of the bird owners, their parrots enjoyed all the calls, while 77 percent thought that they responded more to the live calls.

Martin – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only

The lead author of the study, Dr. Ileyna Hirskyj-Douglas, said that one of the caregivers noticed that their bird enjoyed vocalizing with another live bird.

However, the bird’s interest quickly decreased when they didn’t receive a response to their vocalizations during pre-recorded videos.

These findings could help bird owners expand the social lives of their pets and explore how digital technology can foster new kinds of interactions between animals and humans. More research still needs to be done to support the findings.

“This was a small study, and we can’t draw any definite conclusions at this stage about whether the parrots were in some way aware of the differences between live and pre-recorded interactions. However, the results are compelling and suggest that further study is definitely warranted.”

The study will be presented at a conference in Honolulu on Human Factors in Computing Systems for the Association of Computing Machinery CHI.

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Emily  Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a ... More about Emily Chan

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