When she gets them, she taps the on-screen buttons to make the tablet say “Yum” and “Happy,” in frenzied succession. She can tell Cunha she’s hungry, and for what treats when she’s feeling scared or happy and when she wants to read a board book or listen to music.ĭuring the conversation, Ellie taps a sequence of images on the screen to ask for a treat of sunflower seeds.
A pink-tinged white parrot the size of a dove, Ellie can read basic words, draw 14 letters on a touchpad with her beak, and communicate a wide array of complex feelings and requests on her tablet. That would be Ellie, Cunha’s 11-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo and primary collaborator for the better part of a decade. Northeastern University assistant professor Rébecca Kleinberger. She uses her nose to jab the multi-colored balloons that float onto the screen, making satisfying “Bop!” sounds as they burst.īut Holly, incredibly, is not the main attraction. Soon, Holly scampers up, selects from the menu of options, and settles into a game of “Balloon Pop”-familiar to anyone who knows a preschooler. She dabs peanut butter on the screen of a Samsung Galaxy device outfitted with a foam purple case, worn with scratches and bite marks, and sets it down on her back deck. An affiliated researcher with Northeastern University, Cunha began training two squirrels, dubbed “Noel” and “Holly,” to use a tablet when Noel wandered into her kitchen’s open door last year-mangy, sick and clearly hungry.Īfter getting them healthy, “I said, ‘Listen, ladies, I’ll feed you, but you’re going to work for it,’” she recalls.
This is the first tech-savvy critter Jen Cunha introduces at her home in Jupiter, Florida, on a sun-soaked morning in early March. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University. Northeastern researcher Jen Cunha interacts with her 11-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo, Ellie, at her home in Jupiter, Florida.
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