Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them
Parrots using tablets and even navigating YouTube are prompting people to rethink how intelligent and social these birds are, with many comparing their behavior to that of young children. Commenters share anecdotes of pet birds interacting with phones, tablets, and video calls, highlighting both their cognitive abilities and the practical issues of “screen time” and device destruction. The conversation broadens into whether such smart, long-lived, highly social animals can ever be ethical pets, and what our treatment of them implies about human attitudes toward animal welfare more generally.
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.