New research by the University of Glasgow suggests pet parrots taught to make video calls on Facebook Messenger may prefer live chats with their friends rather than listen to recorded messages.
The appearance of 'liveness' really did seem to make a difference to the parrots' engagement with their screens “Their behaviour while interacting with another live bird often reflected behaviours they would engage in with other parrots in real life, which wasn’t the case in the pre-recorded sessions.“One told us that their bird enjoyed vocalising with another live bird but quickly lost interest when there was no response to their calls during pre-recorded videos.”Credit: University of Glasgow
Each bird had a profile created with their photo and tablets were provided to their owners so the birds could make video calls on Facebook Messenger. Findings showed the parrots preferred live chats to pre-recorded sessions, spending a total of 561 minutes on live calls compared with 142 minutes on playback video.