I have a male Barraband (Superb) parrot [1] and he can scroll videos on Youtube, select the ones with birds in and play those. People are in disbelief when the bird starts watching bird videos on his tablet. His "screen time" is not every day and limited to a few hours. I would love for him to be able to call other birds, he is smart enough to be able to pull that off right now.
I have noticed some new behaviours recently:
1. If I'm eating the bird will beg me for food. I have been able to get him to try any foods that he sees me eating.
2. My bird has a high demand for proteins, which he gets somewhat in nuts (limited due to fats) and he will steal meat whenever possible. The species is not supposed to even want meat, but he will steal it when he can.
3. He now makes a wider variety of noises, far beyond any video I have seen of his species. I believe he is trying to replicate human speech and gets close in tone. We talk to him regularly and I think he tries to talk back.
Anybody else experience strange behaviours with their birds?
The species is not supposed to even want meat, but he will steal it when he can.
Most "seed eating" bird are opportunistic carnivore. Even the hummingbird with it's extra specialized beak supplements his diets with small insects!
Oh and my 12yo bourk's parakeet really like chicken and madly love poutine. Its so funny seeing her taking a bite of French fries followed by a bite of cheese.
I think my bird already has a difficult time focussing, he acts like he has ADHD. He'll happily sit their doom scrolling watching birds.
The other concern is that when he gets too much screen time he becomes less interested in us and starts to be a little aggressive (lands on you and pecks you until you put bird videos on) whenever anybody gets a phone out.
I have a double yellow headed Amazon. He doesn’t seem too interested in other birds (not very interested in my sister’s dove or the wild parrots that fly over head). I’ve put on Blue Planet or YouTubes videos before and he likes to listen to the bird songs/talk, but seems more interested in the sound than the video.
My parrot is interested in my dog though and has picked up of few of my dog’s training commands. He started to say the release command for when my dog sits for his meals so now I get my parrot to use the command on cue, and get the bird to release the dog (and the dog gets dinner and he gets a treat).
If I’m giving attention to my dog, he sometimes wants to come and sit with us on the couch and get some pets himself. He also used to like to drop food for my older dog (who passed), but my younger dog isn’t a huge fan of vegetables so the bird stopped doing it. If my dog seems like he wants to go out the bird will say “you wanna go out?”But most of the time they kind of just ignore each other.
His language is very situational. When I uncover his cage in the morning, he says good morning, when I leave for work or to go out, he says goodbye. He makes water pouring sounds when I pour water, and call himself a good bird when he knows he’s done something good, or say ‘mmmm’ when I’ve given something he likes. He’ll say “wanna go out” when he wants out of his cage. He’s not overly loud for a parrot but does like to belt out some opera regularly.
He learned most of his phrases/words within his first 2-4 years, but I’ve had him for 6 now and he’ll add a new word/phrase into his vocabulary from time to time.
My bird also loves high protein and fatty foods (nuts and coconuts). I’ve never really allowed him to eat my food, but more recently he’s become interested in any food that I’m eating that he knows he’s allowed to have (nuts or popcorn etc), and will say “hello” over and over until I’ve gotten him his unsalted versions of them. I make him do tricks for them usually and that keeps him pretty polite about it. He’s a pretty big bird at 17”.
He used to be a lot more adventurous about food, but he knows what he likes now and usually sticks to his favorites. He also likes to dip each of his kibbles into his water before eating them.
I’ve never expected to get a parrot, but he sort of dropped in my lap and I rescued him. These parrots live as long as humans, so it’s quite the commitment. But he’s a very smart and sweet boi and he’s managed to charm his way into my life.
My African Grey (21m) also dips his kibble in the water. He's done it for at least the past two decades and changing his water is more frequently required than filling up his food bowl. It's interesting to hear your Amazon does it too. Perhaps it's just logical and "cereal without milk" is universally disliked.
My parrot is very particular about food, but will try most things. He likes his sweetcorn cooked, peas cooked, carrot uncooked, etc. He also drops dog food down to the dogs and watches the dogs eating it, and then likes to eat some of the dog food himself (the dog food is mixed with boiling water and cooled so that it is more soggy). He has also successfully trained a young budgie to copy him.
We try not to feed him too many fats. He has access to seeds all of the time, sometimes we put millet in the cage, and occasionally we break up peanuts for him. He is rather partial to a cashew, but they are very fatty. He's not a big bird and smaller birds have more trouble with fats.
He's about 1 year now and seems to be sexually mature, we're hoping we can get him to either do tricks or talk, but not sure about how to train him.
Slightly off topic but somewhat related I've heard of a person (Richard Campbell, can be heard on the podcasts "Dot Net Rocks" or "Run as radio") who taught his parrot to use his voice to control the light at it's cage. The surprising result was that it became obvious that it wanted to go to bed earlier than they thought. It turned off the lights much earlier than the timer had before it gained control and would shut it off again directly if a human turned in on again.
A bit offtopic, but it's funny how people call parrots/birds "extremely intelligent" and AI/LLMs "just stochastic parrots devoid of any intelligence", even though their capabilities are very obviously far more like the inverse of those qualifications (show me a video where someone has even a basic extended back and forth conversation with a bird).
There is a pretty clear double standard there.
Looking at the numbers: Grey parrots have almost 1 billion 'forebrain' neurons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n... ). Estimates for the average number of synapses per neuron range in the thousands, so a conservative estimate for the total would be 1 trillion synapses.
If you assume that LLM parameters are comparable to synapses, then such a bird brain is similar to the frontier LLMs in size ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_language_models ). Yes, the bird brain is far more energy efficient, but with regard to intelligence modern AI absolutely smokes birds.
I think it's a difference in expectation. For some reason, people are surprised that birds have the same intelligence level as a human toddler. However no one wants an AI assistant that's as dumb as a toddler.
uh.. AI/LLMs were created to be smart, and they sometimes meet that expectation. We did not create parrots, we just get surprised when they show off intelligence
> How so or why so, considering their brain size relative to their body, is not well understood.
One factor is neuron size. Bird neurons are around 0.4 the length of mammalian neurons, so you can pack in around 8 times the neurons in a given volume.
A large parrot has the same number of neurons as a medium sized dog.
If you liked that story, you should really read the full anthology, called Exhalation. Ted Chiang is a wonderful writer, and there are a lot of great stories in that book. I think my favorite was The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate.
Crows are pretty smart, I befriended one after offering it cashews daily as I would sit in my patio working on my laptop. Now he pecks on my keyboard to generate code with AI to resolve simple Jira tickets.
> others would want to show another bird their toys
Reminds me of what some people who worked at a facility that took in parrots and similar animals whose owners couldn’t care for them.
They described the birds as little kids, except they can fly and have powerful beaks. Some of them have very strong "destructive" urges too / they want to take everything apart and so on.
Agreed, I respect those folks a lot, not exactly a high paying job / seems like a very personal calling kinda job.
They also get to know the birds in a very personal way it seemed. One bird was "upset" with one of the handlers so she didn't want to participate when we met the birds that day. Apparently that handler had broken up a fight between upset bird and another that morning. Upset bird took that personally.
At the same time upset bird didn't want to miss out on meeting everyone so she came along with two other birds who met us.... upset bird just sorts of sat on the periphery and made sure that everyone knew she wasn't participating. She wanted folks to know she was there, but was not going to perform.
It wouldn't be hard to set up a service like this experiment so birds can socialize whenever they wanted.
> They also seemed to understand that another live bird was on the other side of the screen, not a recorded bird
And I really hate to bring AI into it, but "bird chat bot" doesn't seem too hard to train on a bunch of behaviors for live interaction. It could offer a palette of avatars.
In the past I had parakeets and lovebirds. I think the app is great, but my first (joking) reaction was "Now let's setup a control group by putting the tablet in selfie-mode to simulate a mirror".
> for other parrot owners [...] not be wise to [...] Zoom [...] handlers who had the time and energy to keep tabs on their birds’ behavior—at the first sign of fear, aggression, disinterest or discomfort, they ended the calls. [...] offer an appropriate level of support to empower their parrots but also help them avoid any negative experiences
So to scale, hmm. Visual sentiment analysis of parrots. Parrot-accessibility. And... some kind of chaperone role... Is there a name for UX design which prioritizes non-negativity of experience over task completion and not leaving? Note that parrot-centered design may have unfamiliar properties, like say, stronger association with the physical location of the device, which say might then require a second device elsewhere to emulate a hypothetical "I'm avoiding you and going away to hang with friends" flock UX.
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I have noticed some new behaviours recently:
1. If I'm eating the bird will beg me for food. I have been able to get him to try any foods that he sees me eating.
2. My bird has a high demand for proteins, which he gets somewhat in nuts (limited due to fats) and he will steal meat whenever possible. The species is not supposed to even want meat, but he will steal it when he can.
3. He now makes a wider variety of noises, far beyond any video I have seen of his species. I believe he is trying to replicate human speech and gets close in tone. We talk to him regularly and I think he tries to talk back.
Anybody else experience strange behaviours with their birds?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superb_parrot
Oh and my 12yo bourk's parakeet really like chicken and madly love poutine. Its so funny seeing her taking a bite of French fries followed by a bite of cheese.
Deer, horses, etc will do the same to small mammals and birds.
Are you worried if you give him excessive screen time he won't be able to focus on his studies or something? ;-)
(Cute story, thanks for sharing.)
The other concern is that when he gets too much screen time he becomes less interested in us and starts to be a little aggressive (lands on you and pecks you until you put bird videos on) whenever anybody gets a phone out.
My parrot is interested in my dog though and has picked up of few of my dog’s training commands. He started to say the release command for when my dog sits for his meals so now I get my parrot to use the command on cue, and get the bird to release the dog (and the dog gets dinner and he gets a treat).
If I’m giving attention to my dog, he sometimes wants to come and sit with us on the couch and get some pets himself. He also used to like to drop food for my older dog (who passed), but my younger dog isn’t a huge fan of vegetables so the bird stopped doing it. If my dog seems like he wants to go out the bird will say “you wanna go out?”But most of the time they kind of just ignore each other.
His language is very situational. When I uncover his cage in the morning, he says good morning, when I leave for work or to go out, he says goodbye. He makes water pouring sounds when I pour water, and call himself a good bird when he knows he’s done something good, or say ‘mmmm’ when I’ve given something he likes. He’ll say “wanna go out” when he wants out of his cage. He’s not overly loud for a parrot but does like to belt out some opera regularly.
He learned most of his phrases/words within his first 2-4 years, but I’ve had him for 6 now and he’ll add a new word/phrase into his vocabulary from time to time.
My bird also loves high protein and fatty foods (nuts and coconuts). I’ve never really allowed him to eat my food, but more recently he’s become interested in any food that I’m eating that he knows he’s allowed to have (nuts or popcorn etc), and will say “hello” over and over until I’ve gotten him his unsalted versions of them. I make him do tricks for them usually and that keeps him pretty polite about it. He’s a pretty big bird at 17”.
He used to be a lot more adventurous about food, but he knows what he likes now and usually sticks to his favorites. He also likes to dip each of his kibbles into his water before eating them.
I’ve never expected to get a parrot, but he sort of dropped in my lap and I rescued him. These parrots live as long as humans, so it’s quite the commitment. But he’s a very smart and sweet boi and he’s managed to charm his way into my life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-headed_amazon
My parrot is very particular about food, but will try most things. He likes his sweetcorn cooked, peas cooked, carrot uncooked, etc. He also drops dog food down to the dogs and watches the dogs eating it, and then likes to eat some of the dog food himself (the dog food is mixed with boiling water and cooled so that it is more soggy). He has also successfully trained a young budgie to copy him.
We try not to feed him too many fats. He has access to seeds all of the time, sometimes we put millet in the cage, and occasionally we break up peanuts for him. He is rather partial to a cashew, but they are very fatty. He's not a big bird and smaller birds have more trouble with fats.
He's about 1 year now and seems to be sexually mature, we're hoping we can get him to either do tricks or talk, but not sure about how to train him.
https://nautil.us/the-great-silence-237510/
Corvids, parrots are extremely intelligent. How so or why so, considering their brain size relative to their body, is not well understood.
If you can do grab a copy of Alex and Me.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3018307-alex-me
There is a pretty clear double standard there.
Looking at the numbers: Grey parrots have almost 1 billion 'forebrain' neurons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n... ). Estimates for the average number of synapses per neuron range in the thousands, so a conservative estimate for the total would be 1 trillion synapses.
If you assume that LLM parameters are comparable to synapses, then such a bird brain is similar to the frontier LLMs in size ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_language_models ). Yes, the bird brain is far more energy efficient, but with regard to intelligence modern AI absolutely smokes birds.
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One factor is neuron size. Bird neurons are around 0.4 the length of mammalian neurons, so you can pack in around 8 times the neurons in a given volume.
A large parrot has the same number of neurons as a medium sized dog.
Reminds me of what some people who worked at a facility that took in parrots and similar animals whose owners couldn’t care for them.
They described the birds as little kids, except they can fly and have powerful beaks. Some of them have very strong "destructive" urges too / they want to take everything apart and so on.
Far too many people acquire animals that they aren't able or willing to take proper care of, and parrots have very long lives.
They also get to know the birds in a very personal way it seemed. One bird was "upset" with one of the handlers so she didn't want to participate when we met the birds that day. Apparently that handler had broken up a fight between upset bird and another that morning. Upset bird took that personally.
At the same time upset bird didn't want to miss out on meeting everyone so she came along with two other birds who met us.... upset bird just sorts of sat on the periphery and made sure that everyone knew she wasn't participating. She wanted folks to know she was there, but was not going to perform.
> They also seemed to understand that another live bird was on the other side of the screen, not a recorded bird
And I really hate to bring AI into it, but "bird chat bot" doesn't seem too hard to train on a bunch of behaviors for live interaction. It could offer a palette of avatars.
So to scale, hmm. Visual sentiment analysis of parrots. Parrot-accessibility. And... some kind of chaperone role... Is there a name for UX design which prioritizes non-negativity of experience over task completion and not leaving? Note that parrot-centered design may have unfamiliar properties, like say, stronger association with the physical location of the device, which say might then require a second device elsewhere to emulate a hypothetical "I'm avoiding you and going away to hang with friends" flock UX.