Careful with using Alexa or Google around your pet birds — your feathered friend might end up ordering up some crackers. An African grey Congo parrot in Florida has apparently mastered Amazon’s Alexa digital home assistant and has already moved on to conquering Google Home. Not so nice — the first thing Petra the parrot learned to do was to order all the lights off, at random.
“First, you’re like half awake and … like, ‘Was that a dream? Did that just happen?’,” Petra’s owner told WKMG-TV. “All day, every day, it’s all lights on, all lights off.”
The parrot has even earned its own YouTube channel, currently at more than 13,000 subscribers. Some of the more meta videos show Petra watching her own interviews on television, Facetiming with other parrots, and telling the dog to “Dance! Woo!”
Her owners are smart home enthusiasts, enabling Petra to use their Amazon Echo to use an Insteon switch and Hue bulbs to turn lights on and off, after which she often demands a peanut, according to one YouTube post: “Scratch scratch scratch. I love you. Alexa. All lights on. Fart sound. Come here step you. Peanut. I want a peanut. Whatcha doing?”
Despite Petra’s relatively young age at four years old (African grey Congo parrots can live up to 70 years), she already knows how to speak more than 300 words. Unfortunately, the parrot took quite affectionately to Alexa, which came as quite a shock when her owners switched recently to Google Home.
“She responds to her training by correcting us with ‘Alexa’ when we say ‘OK Google’ lol,” writes Petra’s owner.
Grey parrots, whose natural home is the rainforest, are an endangered species, with humans by far the greatest threat to wild grey parrot populations. In addition to being hunted for its meat and components used in traditional medicines, mortality rates are extremely high after being captured for sale on the international market.
However, companion parrots remain extremely popular for their ability to mimic human speech. These fiercely intelligent birds need near-constant enrichment and attention, partially due to an intelligence level gauged to be par to that of a kindergartener. Studies show that grey parrots can learn number sequences and associate human voices with human faces, in addition to being able to differentiate between objects, colors, materials, and shapes.
Still, Petra the parrot is far from the most dangerous Alexa user in the world. So far, she’s not keeping a shopping list or any of the other smart home gaffes we’ve uncovered by humans, mostly.
Few things ruin a quiet evening faster than a robot vacuum roaring through the living room. Most of us end up pausing the cleaning run, which defeats the whole purpose of owning one. Matic thinks it has the answer with its new Serene robot vacuum, and the big selling point is how little noise it makes.
The Matic Serene runs at 52 decibels even when cleaning at full power. To put that in perspective, Matic compares it to the hum of your refrigerator. It is available now for $1,695, which is $200 more than the original Matic’s current price.
Outdoor security cameras are not always practical if you live in an apartment or rental. Drilling into an exterior wall may be off-limits, while pointing a regular indoor camera through a window can create another problem once reflections start showing up after dark.
Baseus is trying to solve both issues with the new PrimeSentinel W1, a $69.99 security camera designed specifically to monitor the outdoors through glass. It mounts directly to a window without drilling and uses a 4K Starlight sensor with an F1.0 aperture for full-color monitoring during the day and at night.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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