New study provides evidence that parrots can communicate needs and emotions with humans

Posted on 2 December 2024 • Science, maths, computing and technology

New research has provided ground breaking evidence that parrots are able to express their wants and feelings with humans via digital tools.

The results showed that the birds, kept in human care, could exercise a form of communication when selecting from a digital tablet ‘speech board’ with selectable options.

Research papers, co-authored by Professor Clara Mancini from The Open University (OU), demonstrate parrots’ ability to engage in functional communication through speech board interfaces, including navigating and selecting from menus and sub-menus of items representing concrete objects, such as food, and abstract concepts, such as feelings.

Researchers showed that a Goffin’s cockatoo, named Ellie, used her speech board with intention, persistently requesting items she wanted when these were not given to her or rejecting items when the wrong items were offered instead of those she had requested; and to find displaced representations of preferred foods.

Clara Mancini, Full Professor of Animal-Computer Interaction and Head of the Animal-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the OU’s School of Computing and Communications, commented:

“Animals in human care largely depend on us to meet their biological and social needs. This research demonstrates digital technology’s potential to offer them tools for expressing and meeting their needs.

“It also highlights the importance of designing these technologies from the animals’ perspective, by considering their species-specific characteristics, by prioritising the communication functions that matter to them, and by affording them optimal usability and access.”

Mostly, Ellie used her speech board to instigate interactions with her caregiver, to express her emotional states and to make requests and interact with her environment via a human proxy.

The research was conducted in collaboration with Parrot Kindergarten, Florida, which for many years has been teaching parrots to use a speech board to communicate by touching different objects on the screen with their beak.

Jennifer Cunha, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Science and co-founder of Parrot Kindergarten, said:

“Working with Ellie is an incredible experience. This study exemplifies the extraordinary cognitive abilities of parrots, showing strong evidence that Ellie engages in intentional communication. Her use of the speech board advances our ability to facilitate meaningful communication with animals. I believe all parrots are capable of voice in this way. It is my enduring wish that understanding their intelligence leads to greater respect and care for the birds in our lives.”

Looking to the future, the study findings suggest that speech boards could be used to study parrot cognition and how speech board interfaces could be designed to best support parrots’ communication abilities and needs.

Corinne Renguette, Associate Professor at Purdue University’s Department of Technology Leadership and Innovation, commented:

“By aligning a parrot’s speech board interactions with an established model, this research may be able to show how animals in human care can express important communication functions including interacting with caregivers and making choices.

“This work suggests that animals, like humans, have complex communication needs, and using technology might be one way to improve their wellbeing by giving them some agency over their environment.”

The paper, which will be presented in early December at the 11^th International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction having received an Honorable Mention, can be accessed in full online from the Digital Library of the Association for Computing Machinery.