Parrots have a lot in common with toddlers. Brainy birds can learn to recognize colors and shapes, manipulate objects, build large vocabularies and make their needs known in incredibly large volumes. It is also playful, intelligent and curious. without plenty of cognitive enrichment, they get bored quickly.
So pet parrot owners sometimes turn to a strategy familiar to parents: reaching for the nearest available display. And some owners have found that they can keep their birds busy with mobile games, drawing apps and music-making programs designed for young children. “Apps for kids are pretty popular,” said Rébecca Kleinberger, a scientist at Northeastern University who studies how animals interact with technology.
However, apps designed for humans may not be ideal for parrots, who tend to use their tongues to interact with touchscreens. This leads to a variety of unique touch behaviors, Dr. Kleinberger and her colleagues reported in a new study. (The research was a collaboration between Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, who directs the Animal-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Glasgow, and scientists at Northeastern University. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but will be presented at a conference in May. )
The results suggest that mobile apps have potential as an enrichment tool for parrots, but should be tailored to the birds’ specific biology.
“How do we make technology work for their unique bodies and their unique needs?” said Dr. Kleinberger.
To conduct the study, the scientists created a customized version of a mobile app designed to help researchers and designers gather information about how people interact with touchscreens. The app displayed a series of red circles. The birds’ task was to tap them as quickly and accurately as possible, while the app collected data on how the parrots touched the screen.
The owners of 20 pet parrots encouraged the birds to touch the circles by handing out treats. (In most cases, the rewards were edible — peanut butter, yogurt or pine nuts, for example — but the birds had their own idiosyncratic preferences. cheers and praise, Dr. Kleinberger said.)
Once the birds picked up the toy, the researchers began collecting data on their performance and touch behaviors. Parrots were less accurate than humans, but they performed well enough that it was clear they weren’t accidentally tapping the screen, the researchers found.
And the tactile behaviors of birds differed from those of humans in several ways. First, parrots tended to use their tongues to quickly and repeatedly hit the same target. Although the idea remains unproven, Dr. Kleinberger hypothesized that the behavior may be a byproduct of the way parrots use rapid tongue movements to manipulate seeds.
The birds also used lighter pressure than humans, which meant the software didn’t always register their taps, frustrating the birds, Dr. Kleinberger said. They also dragged their strokes more often, moving their tongues across the screen before picking them up again. “It was really a lot of licking the screen,” Dr. Kleinberger said. Designers creating software specifically for parrots could use this knowledge to create a game that is “made to be licked,” he added.
The researchers also found that while humans tend to get faster when targets are close together, for parrots there appeared to be a built-in lag between hitting targets, even those that are close. The video revealed that the birds tended to “hit and retreat,” touching the screen and then being pulled back by it before returning to the next target. The behavior makes sense given how close the eyes are to the tongue, Dr. Kleinberger said. birds may need to pull back from the screen to recalibrate after hitting each target.
Many parrot owners reported that their birds seemed to enjoy using the app, although some birds seemed to lose interest over time. Dr Kleinberger said she hoped designing software specifically for parrots could help enhance the birds’ engagement and enjoyment.
“A lot of animal and technology research is about trying to understand: What can animals do?” said Dr. Kleinberger. “And what I always try to do is reframe the question: What can we do for them?”
