Researchers from the United States and Scotland taught parrots how to be long-distance friends! The study involving three universities taught parrots to ring a bell for access to a tablet. The birds would then select a picture of a different bird on the screen to start a video call.
The researchers say the birds then communicated as they would in the wild. "What the other bird would do, they would do, singing back and forth," parrot behaviorist Jennifer Cunha said. "So, there were a lot of natural behaviors we saw between the two birds, even though there was a screen between them."
The parrots even began to develop friendships and chose the same birds over and over. This research suggests bird-to-bird video calls can improve the well-being of parrots kept as pets, as most people only have one parrot.
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