Parrot Concepts

All of us working with parrots and other intelligent animals owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Irene Pepperberg for her groundbreaking work. It's great to see this recognition.

“Bird brain!” What a compliment. 🐦🧠

Much of what we now understand about the intelligence of birds can be traced back to the work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Her innovative research in comparative cognition, including her ~30-year collaboration with Alex (the African Grey parrot), transformed our understanding of animal intelligence, communication, and concept formation.

❤️We are thrilled to celebrate the news that Dr. Pepperberg has been awarded the 2025 Division 3 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science (APA).

This well-deserved honor recognizes a career that challenged long-standing assumptions, set new scientific standards, and inspired generations of researchers and curious minds alike!

🌟Dr. Pepperberg will be formally honored at the APA Annual Convention (August 6–8, 2026) in Washington, DC—and we couldn’t be more excited to see her extraordinary contributions recognized.

Congratulations to a true pioneer who changed how we see minds beyond our own.💫🏆

This is interesting, and a good example of animal intelligence, but is not an example of an animal "playing the piano." The octopus is producing sounds, but they are incidental to his purpose of pulling the levers to get the crab. He is not performing actions in order to create an interesting sonic experience for himself. In fact, the octopus may not be able to hear the sounds of the instrument at all since their perception of sound is limited to lower pitches.

I taught an octopus piano (it took 6 months) Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

It's good to see this kind of research getting attention.

Cockatoos perform 30 distinct dance moves and may combine them in unique ways Captive cockatoos have at least 30 different dance moves in their repertoire, including headbanging and body rolls, according to a study by Natasha Lubke at Charles Sturt University in Australia, and colleagues, published August 6, 2025 in the journal PLOS One. The moves, of which 17 are newly ident...

This is a really interesting project. It would be interesting to provide more of a menu of different sounds to choose from and play in various sequences. (We are thinking about building something like that.)

In a modest rectangular enclosure surrounded by sparse green shrubbery, just past the main gate of San Diego Zoo Safari Park, a middle-aged hyacinth macaw blasts Daft Punk on his bespoke boombox. His name is Sampson and he likes to dance. Sampson can operate the boombox, aptly named JoyBranch, by biting or holding on to a kind of joystick made to look like a slice of log with a twig protruding from it. Motion sensorskeep the music going as long as he bobs and nods, dipping his head in rhythm. Animals in zoos are continuously bathed in sounds that may have little in common with what they might hear in the wild: construction noise, vehicles, human speech, and the sounds of unfamiliar animal neighbors. Some animals suffer from discomfort severe enough to provoke pacing, rocking, and self-harming behaviors, like plucking out their own feathers.

Keas are known to be clever troublemakers.

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