{"id":35829,"date":"2022-10-12T16:26:55","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/?p=35829"},"modified":"2025-10-16T12:02:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:02:37","slug":"inside-dr-pepperbergs-lab-play-is-the-thing-if-it-is-the-right-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/inside-dr-pepperbergs-lab-play-is-the-thing-if-it-is-the-right-type\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Dr. Pepperberg’s Lab: Play Is The Thing\u2014If It Is The Right Type!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"African
Griffin plays with bottle caps. Courtesy of Dr. Irene Pepperberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We all know that providing our parrots with different types of toys improves their lives. Even my parrots, who spend a considerable amount of every day involved in research, also get plenty of time to play. But each individual bird has individual preferences, and it is important to recognize what actually is “fun” for a given bird. Just cluttering their cages with lots of stuff isn\u2019t necessarily the best option, although that might be necessary initially until it is clear what types of toys are preferred.<\/p>\n

Toy Preferences<\/h3>\n

Griffin, unlike most parrots, likes only one<\/em> type of toy in his cage, and only a few other items elsewhere. We roll up several sheets of construction paper, feather the ends, tie the middle with a piece of rawhide, and fasten it to his cage. He\u2019s 27 years old, and we\u2019ve tried numerous other items\u2026he pays attention to nothing else. However, when he\u2019s on a flat surface, he loves to play with spoons. He rotates and flips them and seems to get quite a charge out of testing gravity\u2014tossing the spoons off the edge of a surface and waiting for his human companions to pick them up and return them. He adores \u2018spoon tickles\u2019\u2014when a human uses the spoon to gently scratch his head. He also likes to play with very small clear plastic cups and small jar lids, rolling them around and chewing on them; tossing them to the floor also seems to be fun.<\/p>\n

\"African
Athena explores her fleece toy (photo by Serena Murphy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Athena seemed to like many different objects at first, but we\u2019ve learned that such is not the case. She does enjoy certain foraging toys and will prefer to use them to obtain the same food she can get for “free” from her food dishes. She loves to chew flannel. She does not, however, like to chew hard plastic. As for wood\u2026well, we recently found that it has to be softwood<\/i>! We noticed that she was ignoring all the lovely hardwood toys in her cage and destroying her expensive perches quite quickly\u2014but only those made of softer wood. And we noticed that she didn\u2019t seem to like colored wood (maybe because she associates colors with \u2018work\u2019\u2014having to vocally identify the colors before she gets the wood for play!).<\/p>\n

One of my research associates brought in a toy made of round pieces of balsa wood. Athena took about a minute to accept it and about 30 mins to destroy it totally! We contacted the company that had been supplying our soft wooden perches (Parrot Wizard\u2014<\/em>thank you!!) and asked if they had some toys made out of the same product. We ordered a batch, which Athena also promptly destroyed (though these, being a bit more complex, took her a day or two each). She was extremely happy and we also noticed another benefit\u2026she had been doing a certain amount of hormonal feather plucking\/chewing of her chest feathers, and that stopped as soon as she received these soft wooden toys! We are going to keep ordering them, but also will order some toy pieces from another company to see if we can construct some interesting items to rotate with the expensive toys make the latter last a bit longer\u2026.<\/p>\n

All this is not to say that you shouldn\u2019t give your birds a specific type of toy and that you should only give them another particular type of toy\u2014it is<\/em> to say that we need to pay attention to the individual<\/em> likes and dislikes of a given parrot. Just like humans, what one bird finds fun, another bird might dislike, and vice versa. For example, I have a dear friend who spends hours each day playing video games, but I find even the thought<\/em> of doing that completely aversive! And while I love to read<\/em> books, another friend much prefers audio<\/em> books. I could go on and on, but I\u2019m sure we are all familiar with similar situations\u2014so why not accept that such is the case for our avian companions?<\/p>\n

Playing With Food<\/h3>\n

We are actually studying this behavior scientifically, though not with standard parrot toys\u2014we are in the process of examining a behavior called \u2018contrafreeloading\u2019\u2014defined as working for food that can simultaneously be obtained for free, a study inspired by Athena\u2019s behavior with her foraging toys. Our thesis is that birds will contrafreeload IF they view the task involved as play-like rather than work-like (Smith et al., 2021); that is, something fun to do in addition to\/along with getting the food item. We\u2019ve found that a task in which one parrot will engage in order to obtain food is very often one that another parrot will ignore in order to choose the free food. Even for something as mundane as shelling almonds\u2026Athena and another parrot in our study preferred to shell the nut rather than simply eat one from which the shell had already been removed; Griffin and two other parrots preferred that the humans do the shelling for them! (We\u2019ve also been looking at species differences, but more about that next month.) To each his own\u2026.<\/p>\n

References:<\/em><\/p>\n

Smith, G.E., Greene, D., Hartsfield, L.A., & Pepperberg, I.M. (2021). Initial evidence for contrafreeloading in Grey parrots via the opportunity for playful foraging. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 135(4), 516-533. doi: 10.1037\/com0000295<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her latest blog, Dr. Irene Pepperberg talks about individual preferences when it comes to parrots and toys. She gives us a glimpse of African greys Griffin and Athena\u2019s favorite toys and their play styles. From paper and spoons to flannel and softwood, see who likes what. Dr. Pepperberg also reveals how Athena\u2019s play behavior inspired a study on “countrafreeloading,” defined as working for food that can simultaneously be obtained for free. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":35830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-behavior","category-editor-choice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInside Dr. Pepperberg's Lab: Play Is The Thing\u2014If It Is The Right Type! – Pet Birds by Lafeber Co.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In her latest blog, Dr. Irene Pepperberg talks about individual preferences when it comes to parrots and toys. 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You can help Dr. Pepperberg continue the groundbreaking parrot research she began more than 30 years ago with Alex, the African grey parrot who won admirers from around the world with his cognitive abilities. If you shop online through sites such as Amazon.com, you can designate the Alex Foundation to receive a percentage of your final sales, or register with the Alex Foundation at iGive.com and a percentage of sales from companies associated with iGive will go to the foundation. The Alex Foundation also has a \u201cDonate\u201d button linked to PayPal. Visit\u00a0The Alex Foundation\u00a0and click on the \u201cSupport Us\u201d link for more information. Read more about the lab at The Alex Foundation Facebook page and at The Alex Foundation Twitter account.","url":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/author\/irene\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35829"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45625,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35829\/revisions\/45625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/pet-birds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}