Birds’ Use of Technology for Enrichment and Socialization
Kleinberger, Rebecca, Jennifer Cunha, Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, and Susan Clubb. Proceedings of the 2023 National Convension of Exotics Veterinarians, Exoticscon (2023)
ABSTRACT
Technology has changed drastically in the past decade, creating new opportunities for enrichment and interactive devices for parrots and their caregivers. While recent advances have been made in parrot husbandry and care practices, the physical and mental health issues in captive parrots persist. While parrots in people's homes often do use technologies, such as tablets and smartphones, these technologies are designed by and for humans, who have vastly different physiology and cognitive processes than what parrots need. In our workshop, we invite veterinarians and other experts in the parrot industry to speculate on how technology can support parrots and their caregivers to improve their everyday lives and welfare, and increase their sense of agency. In this workshop, we will envision the future of parrot technology to critically explore and interrogate what emerging technologies can, and should, look like for birds. Using these visions, we will distill central themes of technology and list important features of these systems to create an expert-guided framework of key features that parrot-technology needs to address.