06 July 2000

Interpet Explorer Developed

A 17 month old African Grey Parrot called Wart is to get his very own internet browser as part of the 'Interpet Explorer' project being carried out by professor Irene Pepperberg, a biologist from the University of Arizona in the U.S. Similar to human children, parrots are intelligent, curious, and thrive on social interaction. Given these traits, professor Pepperberg and the rest of the project are confident that they will be able to construct tools that allow parrots to participate in the internet revolution. In particular, they are looking to build systems that ease the behavioral difficulties that many parrots suffer as a result of their social isolation from other birds. Pepperberg claims that African greys are at least as intelligent as chimps and dolphins, and may even be able to outwit four-year-old children at certain tasks. This intelligence, she says, is one reason they make good pets. The other is their sociability. In the wild, parrots live in flocks and become extremely anxious if they are separated from the rest. Captive birds constantly crave attention. Wart's browser consists of a box with two levers. One lever selects pictures, the other sounds. They use a liquid crystal screen because the flicker rate on a normal cathode ray tube looks to parrots like a strobe light. See Image The range of images and sounds available to Wart are rather limited at the moment but Professor Pepperberg plans to feed many more into Wart's browser so he can contact his old friends and videoconference with them. If that works, then it's a short step to setting up chat rooms where parrots can socialise with one another in cyberspace. Eventually, it is hoped to have special parrot pages on the Web. Ben Resner who works with Pepperberg said: "If parrots like it and owners want it, the service providers would be moronic not to do it," says Resner. "Parrots could be really heavy users.