These mobile games are for the birds

Parrots have a lot in common with toddlers. The smart birds can learn to recognize colors and shapes, manipulate objects, build a large vocabulary and communicate their needs in impossibly high volumes. They are also playful, intelligent and curious; without sufficient cognitive enrichment, they quickly become bored.

That’s why parrot owners sometimes choose a strategy familiar to parents: reaching for the nearest available screen. And some owners have found that they can keep their birds busy with mobile games, drawing apps and music programs designed for young children. “Children’s apps are quite popular,” says Rébecca Kleinberger, a scientist at Northeastern University who studies how animals interact with technology.

But apps designed for humans may not be ideal for parrots, who tend to use their tongues to interact with touch screens. That produces all kinds of species unique touch behaviorreported Dr. Kleinberger and her colleagues inside a new study. (The research, a collaboration between scientists at Northeastern and the University of Glasgow, 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 they need to be tailored to the birds’ specific biology.

“How can we make technology work for their unique bodies and their unique needs?” said dr. Kleinberger.

To conduct the research, the scientists created a modified version of a mobile app designed to help researchers and designers gather information about how people interact with touch screens. The app showed 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 twenty parrots encouraged the birds to touch the circles by handing out treats. (In most cases the rewards were edible – peanut butter, yoghurt or pine nuts, for example – but the birds had their own idiosyncratic preferences. ‘There was one bird that was not very motivated by food, and instead responded most to just eating .cheers and praise,” said Dr. Kleinberger.)

Once the birds mastered the game, the researchers began collecting data on their performance and touching behavior. The parrots were less accurate than humans, but performed so well that it was clear they were not tapping the screen randomly, the researchers found.

And the birds’ touch behavior differed from that of humans in several ways. First, the parrots tended to use their tongues to hit the same target quickly and repeatedly. Although the idea remains unproven, Dr. Kleinberger that the behavior could be a byproduct of the way parrots use rapid tongue movements to manipulate seeds.

The birds also used lighter pressure than human users, which meant the software didn’t always register their taps, which frustrated the birds, Dr. said. Kleinberger. They also dragged their touches more often, moving their tongues across the screen before picking them up again. “It was really a lot of licking the screen,” said Dr. Kleinberger. Designers who create software specifically for parrots can use that knowledge to create a game that is “made to be licked,” she added.

The researchers also found that while humans tend to get faster when the targets are brought closer together, in the parrots there seemed to be a built-in delay between hitting the targets, even when they were close together. Video footage showed that the birds tended to ‘tap and retreat’, touching the screen and then retreating before moving on to the next target. The behavior makes sense considering how close the eyes are to the tongue, said Dr. Kleinberger; the birds may need to retreat from the screen to recalibrate after hitting each target.

Many parrot owners reported that their birds enjoyed using the app, although some birds seemed to lose interest over time. Dr. Kleinberger said she hoped that designing software specifically for parrots could increase the birds’ engagement and enjoyment.

“A lot of research into animals and technology 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?”