Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

Parrots and Touchscreens

• Commenters are impressed that parrots can learn to use tablets, sometimes resembling very young human users.
• Some are skeptical, arguing the birds may just be pecking at moving dots as if they were seeds or insects, not truly “playing games.”
• Concerns mirror those about children and screens: overuse, dependency, and frustration when devices or videos are interrupted.
• Owners worry more about parrots damaging tablets than about harm to the birds from the devices.

Anecdotes from Bird Owners

• Many share stories of parrots and smaller birds interacting with phones and tablets: some love screens, others display fear or aggression, especially toward handheld phones.
• Birds sometimes treat phones as rivals, predators, or social partners, flirting with reflections or images of other birds.
• Individual preferences are strong: some birds accept physical affection only when a phone is present, or use tablets to navigate apps and videos.

Pet Suitability and Welfare

• Multiple commenters warn that parrots make demanding, often poor pets: they are noisy, destructive, highly social, and live for decades.
• Parrots are compared to hyperactive children “with scissors for a face” who never mature.
• Some argue owning a single parrot is akin to imprisoning an intelligent, social being; others think quality of life can be improved with video calls to other parrots and enriched environments.

Animal Intelligence and Human Exceptionalism

• The thread frequently questions human uniqueness, highlighting evidence of advanced cognition in parrots, crows, orcas, and apes.
• Debate arises over how to compare intelligence across species, especially given communication barriers.
• Some emphasize that tests must account for these gaps; others maintain humans remain uniquely capable in language and abstraction.

Ethics of Animal Use and Farming

• A long subthread debates whether exploiting animals (for food or companionship) is morally wrong.
• Positions range from strong vegan/anti-exploitation stances to defenses of “humane” farming and domestication.
• Participants note that moral claims rest on subjective axioms (e.g., reducing suffering, valuing self-determination), and these are contested.