Measuring Discrimination Abilities of Monk Parakeets Between Discreet and Continuous Quantities Through a Digital Life Enrichment Application

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that digital life enrichment applications can effectively measure discrimination abilities in Monk Parakeets, reducing bias and cost compared to traditional experimental methods used with African Grey parrots.

Contribution

The paper introduces a digital method to replicate and extend discrimination experiments in parrots, improving bias control and scalability over previous protocols.

Findings

Similar discrimination results obtained for Monk Parakeets as in previous studies with African Grey parrots

Digital approach reduces experimental bias and cost

Method enables large-scale replication of avian discrimination experiments

Abstract

Ain et al. measured three African Grey (Psittacus erithacus) parrot's discrimination abilities between discreet and continuous quantities. Some features of their experimental protocol make it difficult to apply to other subjects and/or species without introducing a risk for some bias, as subjects could read cues from the experimenter (even though the study's subjects probably did not). Can digital life enrichment techniques permit us to replicate their results with other species with less risk for experimental bias, with a better precision, and at lower cost? Inspired by previous informal digital life enrichment experiments with parrots, we designed and tested a web application to digitally replicate and extend Ain et al.'s experimental setup. We were able to obtain similar results to theirs for two individuals from a distinct species, Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta Monachus), with increased guarantees against potential experimental biases, in a way which should allow to replicate such experiments at larger scale and at a much lower cost.