Can animals play video games?
Researchers at MIT have been creating computer software for parrots for a long time. Their African greys enjoy viewing videos and listening to music on
their "InterPet Explorer" program, and even have a specialized interface for accessing different sites. Well, I've got an African grey as well (see Fig. 1), and he's a smart little bugger. He spends more time on his own than I'd like, and it's hard to keep up with his appetite for destroying his toys. So I'm giving him my old computer.
Rather: I'm hooking up my old computer to the big screen in the family room, and letting him control a joystick to see if he enjoys it. I know he loves moving pictures: he adores watching movies or video games, and often talks to the images he sees, or even goes up to the screen to try to touch them. At first I was just planning on giving him access to simple flash games, things like
this or
this. Then I thought, "What about The Endless Forest? It has joystick controls ..."
I've never used the joystick controls, though. Mine is a two-button, the simplest I could find (I mostly expect him to press the main button, not the trigger). Can I set those two buttons to do actions? Dance and Roar, perhaps? What do you guys think of this idea? Is it crazy? Would you like playing TEF with a parrot?
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