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Alright. Kili, my Senegal parrot, is going to help me demonstrate how to teach a parrot
to put a ring on a peg by color. So, this is the parrot ring cuffs. The first you need
to do is you need to teach the parrot how to pick up rings and be able to fetch them
to you. We're going remind the parrot how to fetch. Kili, fetch. Good bird.
The next step, we'll get rid of the extra rings that we don't need yet. We're just going
to use one color. Kili, fetch. And I'm going to teach her to fetch it on there by putting
my hand on top of the ring toss instead. Fetch. Kili, fetch. Good bird.
So, the first idea is to teach the parrot to approach the peg with the ring in it's
beak. You can use your hand to trick it, while it doesn't know how to put it on yet. Fetch.
Good bird. Kili, go fetch.
My goal is going to be to get the parrot to put the ring right on here by getting it to
fetch as precisely as possible. Good bird. Very nice. Kili, fetch. Now, she already knows
how to put the ring on the peg, but the whole trick is about teaching the parrot to fetch
it in the vicinity of the peg and to put it on. One way that I found convenient to get
her to do it is to teach her how to touch the pole right after putting a ring on, so
when she was coming over here and putting it on, she wouldn't quite get it on all the
way or drop it.
So, I taught her to target to and touch this, peg when she drops the ring on. And that way,
she has to drop the ring on in order to touch the pegs. So, watch how she does it. Kili,
fetch. Good bird. By teaching her how to touch the peg at the end after dropping the ring
on, it forces her to let go of the ring rig onto the peg.
So, the next step is to introduce more colors, and we can teach the bird to do each color
by doing, instead of three at a time, we do two at a time. So, we pick two distinct colors,
and we use only one ring and teach the bird to bring it only to the right color.
So, whenever they do it the right way you give it a treat. Whenever they don't, you
don't. Good bird. And occasionally swap it up. Now, she knows the colors. But confused
birds wouldn't know what to do would put it on the pink one, and then you don't reward.
But whenever the bird does put the ring on the correct color, you do reward.
So, the whole way to teach this is to keep having to practice over and over again and
mix things up and have it learn to match the colors. Good bird. Then we can swap and teach
it the other color instead. Kili, fetch. Of course, she knows the colors so she's going
to put it. She's going to look which. Where does that go? Good bird.
Sometimes you can teach a parrot you parrot a little bit and cheat, by pointing the the
one where you want it to go, so they learn some extra colors. Kili, fetch over here.
Good bird.
Then, we can step things up, have it fetch two rings and match each one to the right
color. Good bird. Fetch. Kili, fetch. Very good. And then, finally, you're ready to mix
up the colors a little more and introduce a third.
While you're introducing the third, you might want to do green and pick, blue and green.
But after the bird knows a few colors they just learn the concept and can do any number
of rings you want them to do. Kili, go fetch. Hey, go fetch. Good bird. Fetch. Kili, go
fetch. Good job. And that's how you teach a parrot to put a ring on a peg by color.