He is very clever in understanding his environment. Once he raised one wing over his head and lowered the other wing to make his shoulders narrow enough to walk between two obstacles. He also has a strange desire to explore dark closets - odd since he has poor night vision.
I advise against anyone buying a Parrot unless they have a lot of free time. A Parrot will thrive in captivity if he has a lot (a lot!) of attention, otherwise Parrots in captivity will be miserable. For example, my wife and I need to keep our bird in the same room where we are hanging out - it does not do at all to leave a Parrot by themselves and we only do so when we go out to some social event. When we travel I hire a bird specialist to care for him. I have mostly been retired for a long time, so he is a good pet for me.
Would he recognize premade tools, maybe pick the best one from a collection of tools present?
There's also some potential in seeing if birds exibit certain types of economic behaviour. If it would be somewhat tedious to collect two nuts per day and he could live off one, would he save some nuts to build a more complex tool (requireing a day+ of build time) that would allow him to harvest a "free" nut each day etc.
The life of parrots in the wild is too eventful for them to bother with making tools :)
Here in The Yukon we have lots and lots of enormous ravens that hang around and generally cause trouble (getting into trash, etc.). While out moose hunting they were following our canoe and making all kinds of noise when we were trying to be quiet.
I was wondering if it would be possible to train one to seek out moose, and land in a tree above them, so we could spot the moose (they are very hard to spot sitting on the side of a river in long grass).
This gives me hope.
I'm imagining some magpie with a tie flying in, taking the stick and demanding a nut to give it back :D
Where a bird uses cars and a crosswalk to crack nuts.
Building for the future (you know, you do not build a nest with a couple of straws) means projecting oneself in the future: that is intelligence for me.
'I know you're wrong' is quite strong.
However there is a big difference between something that you have wired into your instinct by thousands of years of evolution (such as nests and spider webs) and coming up with new tools in order to adapt to a novel environment.
