MIT Project: Teach a Parrot to Surf the Web

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —  Polly wanna Web-surf?

That’s what a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a few students are trying to figure out. They’re training a gray parrot named Arthur to use a computer to surf the Internet -- hoping to keep boredom at bay for their feathered friend.

“Parrots are very social creatures,” said Irene Pepperberg, a visiting professor of animal behavior. “In the wild, they live in flocks. . . . People buy these animals as pets, they interact with them a lot in the morning and they interact with them a lot in the evening, but then they leave them alone eight or nine hours a day.”

Those pet parrots become bored, she said, and start to chew their feathers, scream or exhibit other behavioral problems.

Benjamin Resner, a research assistant at MIT, came up with the idea of teaching lonely parrots to check out the Internet.

It’s no joke. Susan Farlow, who runs Jacot Unlimited, a bird-behavior consultant company in Lincoln, Mass., thinks the idea could work. More importantly, she said, if the idea flies, it will prevent many birds from hurting themselves in their fits of boredom and anxiety.

Arthur doesn’t seem interested in much more than pecking at his virtual counterparts when parrot pictures pop up on the screen. But Resner envisions a day when Arthur can play games, enter chat rooms filled with other parrots, or talk to his owner through the computer.

Resner and some students built a joystick-like controller for Arthur that can be moved side to side and up and down.

The next step will be building “InterPet Explorer,” which would include only Web sites that would intrigue parrots.