Can this Cute Cockatoo Solve the Puzzle? (All new designs!)

[Music] this is popeye a wild sofa crested cockatoo that i've pretty much adopted at this point or maybe he's adopted me i'm not too sure popeye visits our balcony regularly for snacks of seed and apple and like other parrots is incredibly intelligent a few months ago i thought it'd be fun to test that intelligence with a specially designed parrot puzzle and documented his interactions with it i usually give popeye a little bit of apple but he absolutely loves sunflower seeds and they made the perfect incentive the results of that experiment were fascinating and it turns out a lot of you thought so too a lot of people also had great suggestions for different puzzles i could challenge him with so in this video i'll be offering popeye a range of new puzzles based off your comments ranging from simple to much more complex let's get started to recap this is the puzzle from the first video seed is placed in the top and held in place by a series of dowels as they're removed the seeds flow down a path to an opening at the bottom it's very visual with transparent covers and popeye as well as another visiting cockatoo on another occasion solved it relatively quickly once they realized it meant the promise of a reward now you guys had tons of great suggestions on how to modify this puzzle to make it more challenging but my favorites were these number one try obscuring the path and seeds and see how the birds react and number two what happens if you add additional superfluous dowels well after modifying the design in cad these puzzles were the result the obscured dowel puzzle is structurally identical to the original only now the front and back panels are plywood which completely obscures the seeds and the seed path i'm really curious to see if popeye will show any interest in it at all considering you can't visually see the reward but instead he would have to remember and associate the design with the previous puzzle next is this version with three additional dowels that serve well no purpose at all really the purpose of this is to test to see if popeye can discern between the important dowels that hold the seeds in place and the others which have no effect considering he continued to show interest in the first puzzle even when all the dowels were removed and the seeds gone i'm curious to see if he'll do the same thing here so let's put them to the test now popeye comes and goes he's a wild bird but over the past few months he's become a lot more comfortable with my presence and he seems almost visibly excited when i bring out the puzzles so it's no surprise to anyone that he can solve the first style puzzle with ease but what about if he can't see inside the puzzle at all well there you go the wood panels provided a little bit more friction than before but nonetheless it's obvious that popeye knew exactly what to do to release those tasty seeds but something unexpected happened here you see only a few seats actually came out the bottom as it turns out the wood texture easily binds them up in the mechanism so when he bumps the puzzle again more pour out this is accidentally really fascinating because again he can't see inside at all but now knows if he shakes the puzzle it might reveal more treats our final dowel puzzle is this one with three extra dowels for him to contend with so let's see how he does here there's no question by now that popeye is an absolute pro at removing these dowels but the extra ones do seem to throw him off just a little bit however it's really interesting to see that he completely ignores the two on the left especially that one at the top left and this was confirmed a second time when he basically speed ran the puzzle but still left that top left down till the end when he had already eaten the seeds then i decided to give him one more shot for the day and he solved it without pulling out any of the additional dowels to get the seed however something you'll note is he doesn't always follow the order from the top to the bottom down to remove the seeds that's because of this puzzle order isn't really all that important something i do like about this puzzle design is that there's a very obvious solved state once the dowels are removed but what about a new puzzle with a very different mechanic what about if instead of removing dowels he has to press levers introducing a brand new parrot puzzle with levers instead of removable dowels like before there's an internal seat path with clear windows and barriers which must be overcome in a specific order for the seed to flow down and out the bottom and this is version one with weighted wooden arms activating columns inside the puzzle so let's see how popeye likes it uh oh dear yeah who didn't see that coming three millimeter plywood snapped like nothing cockatoos are incredibly curious and test everything with their powerful beaks plus i think they just look a bit too much like the dalles he's already associated with removing so he's applying a lot of force to try to break them off instead of just treating them like a lever so back to the drawing board version two is beefed up in every way with a thicker cross section and new 10 millimeter thick pine levers which hopefully should be a little bit more durable but the new design should be able to withstand the curious abuse a little better i also sourced a way more secure strap so the puzzle is more secure than ever so after placing a few tempting seeds in front of the puzzle i left popeye to figure out this new challenge uh so close but you can really see the frustration setting in he's kind of throwing attention right now so i gave him a few seeds of encouragement and thought maybe a visual demonstration might help and breakthrough he didn't need assistance but he is starting to push the levers down and does get the last lever to dispense some seeds but i want to see him solve the puzzle on his own the entire sequence from start to finish with all three levers this test was really fascinating because unlike the previous puzzle popeye picked up on the lever action fairly quickly but i think the same texture and similar size to the dowels kept throwing him off he was trying to pull them out as well as manipulate them but the order was something he clearly struggled with as well in the previous puzzle he would usually but not always remove the first dowel and then the second indicating to me an understanding of the importance of order for that puzzle order isn't critical but it absolutely is here remember popeye has a visual impairment which could also be affecting him so perhaps three levers in a sequence might be a bit of a high bar to set straight away he was getting pretty frustrated and in the end gave up and went to find the seeds that had blown onto the floor instead so it's time for one more redesign for a start he was absolutely mangling the pine levers they're a little bit more durable than before but yeah cockatoos and their beaks are destructive so i 3d printed some replacements out of nylon this is an incredibly durable plastic you can 3d print but it's not brittle so there's no risk of it shattering and injuring him if he does decide to crunch on it because popeye struggled with three levers i decided to simplify the design to two levers which must still be used in sequence by the way many of you asked in the previous video how i know popeye is a boy well in all honesty i don't unlike many other parrots it's very difficult to differentiate the gender of sulphur crested cockatoos but in general males have darker brown eyes compared to the reddish brown of females which is why i'm assuming popeye is a boy but i could be completely wrong anyway here we are after literally months of designing prototyping waiting for popeye to visit redesigning let's see how he handles this new challenging puzzle did you catch that this bird i tell you for a start he's definitely pushing them down with purpose there's no accident there but after failing to solve the three-lever version he managed to get it right here but disaster yep all hail the crappy puzzle designer he does the right thing but the seeds jam up and he seems quite perplexed and frustrated by this i went out to try and clear the jam and loaded seeds into the second part of the puzzle and then this happened yep that jam seems to have been enough to discourage him from using the first lever at all and he once again abandons the puzzle to search for seeds elsewhere but as always popeye was back so i offered the puzzle to him again and this is what happened next once again he seems to know exactly how to get the seeds including operating the levers in the correct order but once again the damn thing binds up this time the column jams for some unexplained reason and he once again gets frustrated and walks away i know buddy i'm sorry look i'll be designing a version three lever puzzle with a much more reliable mechanism in future trust me but during a following session with popeye something truly amazing occurred that i wanted to share because he was struggling with the first lever again my fault not his he would actually wait for me to come out and press it for him and then he would press the second lever and finish the job and get his seeds no joke i did this again and again with him and it was pretty adorable to say the least am i part of the puzzle now is this bird so clever that he's simply using me as part of the solution to get his seeds probably well there you have it popeye once again continues to impress me and i hope this video inspires you to look at birds with a newfound appreciation as well but wait there's more if you'd like to show your love for popeye the cockatoo and help me cover some of my repair bills due to these experiments you can now buy official popeye parrot merch that's right isn't this just the cutest thing ever it's strictly limited edition so get in quick if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one and let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions of other ideas for future puzzles you'd like to see popeye try and solve by the way if you want to see more footage of these adorable birds i have a lot of footage i haven't used in this video including this incredibly tame cockatoo that was completely ignoring my puzzle and others trying to solve the dowel and lever puzzles with various degrees of success so you can find that video linked it's on my second channel if you want to go watch it there either way thanks for watching guys i love for you again very shortly here on maker's muse bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 1,103,936

Rating: 4.9609399 out of 5

Keywords: 3d, printing, parrot solving puzzle, cockatoo, maker's muse, makersmuse, angus deveson, australia

Id: 2lgWcGIoSVA

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020