Squawk of the town: Parrot study reveals how technology can enrich the lives of pet parrots

You don’t need to work in an avian practice to know just how important enrichment is for our feathered friends. Parrots, with their chatty natures and long lifespans, can find it particularly difficult when their social needs aren’t met, but because of the risk of disease transmission, in-person parrot play dates aren’t generally an ideal solution.

But thanks to new research, pet parrots may soon have a way to connect and communicate with other captive parrots safely—and with control over when they talk and who they talk to.

Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, PhD, and Rébecca Kleinberger, PhD, are two of the coauthors of the award-winning “Birds of a Feather Video-Flock Together: Video Calling System for Pet Parrots” paper, which sought to determine whether, if given the opportunity, parrots would freely engage in calling other parrots. They shared a bit about how this study came about, what findings they found most surprising, and where they hope this research leads.

A path to the parrot study

Both researchers came into this work with a deep love of both animals and technology.

Kleinberger, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, the director of the INTERACT Animal Lab, and a research affiliate at MIT and Harvard, grew up on a farm in France raising chickens, shearing sheep, training dogs, and caring for cats, guinea pigs and hedgehogs.

“I was always drawn by the relationship we build with animals,” she said. “While doing my PhD on interactive technology and human-computer interaction at the MIT Media Lab, following the viral spread of my TED talk in 2017, I was invited to deploy some of my research at the San Diego Zoo. There I discovered a real gap in tools used to benefit animals and cutting-edge technology used for humans. One of my projects there was about developing a physical interface to let animals control the music and sound in their environment. After my PhD, I built my lab around the vision of leveraging technology to enrich animals’ lives.”

Hirskyj-Douglas, an assistant professor at the University of Glasgow, has been building computers since she was young, and studied computer science at university for her degree and masters.

When her black Labrador, Zack, came into her life and started cuddling up to her while she watched TV, she began to wonder if she could build computers that would allow him to also control the TV. “I started to build computer devices for my dog to control screens and also look at how these computers could help dogs in shelters,” she said. “Later on, while I was visiting zoos, I realized that the computer devices I was building for dogs could also help animals in zoos, to have control and choice over their life and provide us with a window into their world.”

She’d already been working on video call technology for dogs to ring other dogs—and their people—when the parrot study came about. “I was at a conference and heard about how parrots have high needs, and are cognitively complex, but often live alone,” she said, “and thought the technology that I was building could apply also to these wonderful birds.”

Do you see what I see?

Before the parrot study could truly kick off, the team first needed to determine whether the tablet screens they intended to use would even work for this purpose.

“The first step of our study was to assess if the parrots could at all make sense of what they were seeing on the tablet screens,” said Kleinberger. Off-the-shelf screens are, understandably, designed for human vision, but birds’ sensory perceptions are quite different—and they’re even different among various species. For instance, “Many parrot species can see UV lights and appear to see the world faster than us due to their different flicker fusion rates,” she said.

Despite the differences in perception, the team’s observations suggested that the birds could make sense of what they saw on those screens. “[T]hey were engaged, followed the other birds on the screen visually and by touching it, and appeared to mirror some of the behaviors they saw, which indicated the potential to connect with the other animal live on the screen,” Kleinberger said.

“Based on what we know of their perception, they likely saw the screen flicker, and with odd colors, so we hypothesized that it was a bit like humans watching old black and white movies in slightly accelerated speed—not perfectly adapted to our perception, but still meaningful enough for connection,” she said. “Throughout the study we observed a diversity of social behaviors, from preening together, sleeping next to each other, or vocalizing together across screens.”

Offering a sense of control

One aspect of the study that the team prioritized was ensuring the parrots had a choice in the matter—and to make certain the parrots understood that they had that level of control. This wasn’t only a challenge in terms of teaching the parrots, but also with regard to training the human caretakers, as humans can struggle to let go of control when it comes to the animals in their care, said Kleinberger.

“It was very important for us not to just put the birds in front of a video call but to make them active deciding actors in the process. They always had the choice to request a call, to decide who to call, and to stay engaged or not,” she said.

“During the open call sessions, we did not reward the birds with extrinsic rewards like food, and the calls themselves proved to be rewarding because each and every bird was able to do the full interaction sequence: bell ringing, screen touching, and staying engaged,” Kleinberger explained. “We really believe in reinforcing the idea that what we do is provide the animals with choice to open up their world to more possibilities.”

Providing animals with that sense of control is something she said they’re continuing to explore. “To give animals even more agency, we have been working on personalizing tech interfaces for animals’ unique bodies in different ways,” she said. “For example, touchscreens are very adapted for human fingers, so we are looking at the best design of tech interfaces for animals that leverage off-the-shelf hardware. Our recent touchscreen study helped identify optimal parameters for designing apps for birds and we are working on extending it to other species.”

Expectations and excitement

Since no one had built video call technology for parrots before, the team wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, said Hirskyj-Douglas. “This is why we put in a lot of work in training with the caregivers to recognize any negative reactions, and also to allow the parrots to leave at any time,” she said.

However, if they had set expectations, they would’ve been exceeded. “I was pleasantly surprised at how many video calls the parrots did make, and also when looking in the data that they had favorite friends to video call,” Hirskyj-Douglas said. “Having studied how people use technology, I was also surprised to find that the more that they get incoming calls the more they call, implying an element of sociality, which is what we see in humans with social technology.”

Later in the study, they also looked at the effect of providing videos of parrots in calls, rather than live calls, said Hirskyj-Douglas. “While we mostly found that parrots significantly preferred the live calls, two of our birds preferred the video version,” she said. “[W]e have not researched it in depth, I would suggest that playing parrot videos to other parrots is not a bad place to start.”

Still, she emphasized that nothing can beat simply pet parents simply spending time with their birds.

Upcoming research (and applications for general practitioners)

While the “Birds of a Feather” study has certainly found its wings with plenty of media attention, the researchers are not content to “nest” on their laurels. And that, of course, begs the question: What’s next?

A lot, as it turns out—like digging into how video calls affect parrots’ behaviors.

“For example, do they engage in certain behaviors together? Or are there certain behaviors they do with parrots that they do not do when watching videos of parrots?” Hirskyj-Douglas said. “This is what is currently fascinating me, looking at how parrots cognitively understand calls from analyzing their behaviors.”

While they hope this work will lead to the creation of a video call app designed specifically to facilitate this kind of parrot interaction, Hirskyj-Douglas said they’re still looking into it. “Much more work has to be done on how this can be done without such intensive support that we provided in a research study,” she said.” Our goal is really the parrots’ welfare first, and so we are always cautious about putting something out there.”

But that’s not all, said Kleinberger.

“We are also working on extending our work to other species who could benefit from social enrichment and the development of their species identity through virtual interaction,” she said. “The idea of creating portals—virtual, auditory, tactile, olfactory—a cross space and time could apply to many species, but does require strong ethical consideration so as to not ‘fool’ or confuse the animals in their own umwelt [aka the world as the animal experiences it].”

Additionally, said Kleinberger, her lab is working on a collaboration with a veterinary clinic on leveraging technology to reduce animal stress during vet visits.

“As part of this collaboration, it has been very interesting to see that although veterinarians navigate a very technological environment, it is mostly the humans who are considered users and are controlling these systems. Some of our goal is to shift paradigm and give animals control of their experience,” she said. “We are trying to bridge that gap between high-tech veterinary environments and animal agency.”

Polly want to follow along?

If this study has beaked—erm, piqued—your interest, you can keep abreast of what these researchers are looking into, or even get involved, in a few ways.

“We are always happy to engage with stakeholders of animal technology,” Kleinberger said. “If anyone has a relevant project idea or a population that needs support, we welcome collaboration. We have a lot of ongoing projects, including many we still do together.”

They regularly have new papers coming out, she said, and interested parties can follow the INTERACT Animal Lab on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and their website.

“Additionally, we have fantastic student researchers in our lab, including pre-veterinary students, who we train in animal-computer interaction research,” Kleinberger added. “Through internship and co-op programs, we have seen these students serve as a bridge between our research labs and veterinary institutions, bringing both their research training and their passion for animal care to clinical settings.

Hirskyj-Douglas shared that she’s not just content with ruffling feathers; she’s also aiming to get tails wagging with her exciting canine research, including developing a dog-to-human caller and penning a paper on dog-to-dog remote technology.

“I envision a future in which technology can be used to collapse the space between many different species, much like the parrot video call did for parrots,” she said. “For instance, imagine pets kept overnight with vets in contact with their family and fellow pets at home.”

Photo credit: © Kleinberger et al. 2023

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