In a recent experiment with 28 Agapornis roseicollis, researchers investigated how well these small parrots could learn to associate symbols with quantities of food. The birds not only learned to recognize the symbols but were also able to infer which symbols represented more or less food. Their accuracy increased with larger differences between quantities, especially at smaller ratios. The results show that lovebirds possess remarkable cognitive abilities for associative learning and quantity discrimination — comparable to those of larger, more extensively studied parrot species[1].
Literature:
[1] S. Wang e.a., ‘Food for thought: Rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) are capable of associative symbol learning and inference-based quantity discrimination’, 31 december 2024, bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2024.12.30.630847.