Do your birds understand video?

[HeatherG]

My Quaker (and previous Quaker) have learned to mess with the phone or tablet to get me to look away. So they do kind of understand how to peck on an object…

I just saw a Reddit video of some guy’s pet king cobra moving towards a cellphone. The thing made me nervous; I’m betting it would scare the bejeesus out of my bird.

I am wondering if the birds understand the shapes on screen or if it’s more like they like the sounds of the birds? But I’m pretty sure a snakey shape would get a fright response.

Anyhow I wonder if you could get your bird to peck on a photo of a food item or toy to get the toy? I think a drawing of the item might be confusing.

 

[Rozalka]

With the sounds of birds - definitely my birds understand them. Just turn on a budgie calling sound and then I have a calling chorus (my Bourkes understand this sound).

With shapes - tested only with Zenek and he always seems to ignore what he sees (I mean, he isn't interested on what's shown unless it makes shooting sounds). I tried a similar thing like on the Internet some videos of dogs reaction for their owners using special effects on phones (eg spiders walking on their face, scary mask etc) and obviously they (dogs) are confused by it... Zenek 0 reaction
However once time he enjoyed a red circle on my phone during video conversation and wanted to pick it disconnecting us

I'm curious how parrots see screens - they see more colors than us, Idk how cameras are made - do they catch "invisible-to-us" colors? If not, the screen is much different then what parrots see irl, so maybe they can see shapes but colors are messed up? And this would make it impossible for them recognizing what's shown exactly?

 

[Cottonoid]

From what I've read, I think parrots see screens the way we see black and white TV screens. They can still recognize the pictures.

Cotton definitely can even without sound clues - the first time I ever heard him alarm call was at a TV scene with a bunch of crows flying upward above the camera, with music and no audible wing or bird sounds.

He also does not care for cockatoos - he alarm calls and growls at the too in Rio and also growls and lunges at ParrotTown TV if the cockatoo is the first bird that he sees on their live streams - both are set to music and Rio is animated, so I believe he's using visual cues more than anything else.

So far Opie just likes to poke the screen and stick his tongue on icons

 

[texsize]

The Twins get super excited by amazon parrot videos.
If they hear me playing videos of amazons talking or singing, they will scream until I show the video to them.
I think they know the birds aren't in the room with them but just enjoy watching.

 

[wrench13]

100% certain parrots can see flat screen TV's just fine. A little less colorful, like someone broke the red emitter pixels, only its the IR and UV ones that are missing. Salty His favs are IRNs and some AMazons, but not all, go figure. Unmoved at all by Greys and 'toos.