How nifty!

Parrots are social creatures. However, most pet parrots are singletons. They get lonely and sometimes that leads to destructive behavior.

From the Smithsonian:

Once the birds had learned how to initiate video interactions, the second phase of the experiment could begin. In this “open call” period, the 15 participating birds could make calls freely; they also got to choose which bird to dial up. Over the next two months, pet parrots made 147 deliberate video calls to other birds. [...]

For starters, they found that the parrots took advantage of the opportunity to call one another, and they typically stayed on the call for the maximum time allowed during the experiment. They also seemed to understand that another live bird was on the other side of the screen, not a recorded bird, researchers say. Some of the parrots learned new skills from their virtual companions, including flying, foraging and how to make new sounds. [...]

The birds forged strong friendships, which researchers measured by how frequently they chose to call the same individual. Parrots who initiated the highest number of video calls also received the most calls, which suggests a “reciprocal dynamic similar to human socialization,” per the statement.

The article links to this ACM paper. Yes, ACM-CHI, meaning it's from a technical conference not an animal-behavior conference. (Also, I guess this stretches the boundaries of the 'H' in CHI, which stands for Computer-Human Interaction, or at least did the last time I attended that conference.)

A student posted a question on the SE site for writing. Paraphrasing: I was taught not to use Wikipedia for research because anybody can post anything, so I've been using a reputable published encyclopedia instead. But isn't stuff on Wikipedia reviewed? Is it trustworthy?

I answered:

Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced site where anybody can contribute, like Stack Exchange. Wikipedia strives for verifiability and neutrality and has an active user community, but that doesn't mean that things can't get past it. It doesn't mean information there can't be wrong. Some pages are full of detailed, reliable information; some are not. So, in evaluating the reliability of what you read on any given page there -- or anywhere else! -- you need to ask yourself how they know what they say.

Do they cite sources? Good Wikipedia pages do. Do they not cite sources but make a logical argument? (Not so common on Wikipedia, but common elsewhere on the Internet.) Do they present evidence?

Since you asked about Wikipedia I'll focus on sources. For a first approximation, ask yourself if the sources cited are generally considered to be credible. If they cite peer-reviewed, publicly-available research, that's pretty good. If they cite the National Enquirer (a tabloid full of sensationalist fiction masquerading as news), be very suspicious. If the facts you're checking are particularly important, central to your thesis for example, then you might need to actually go look up some of those sources to confirm that the Wikipedia page accurately represents them. If the facts are less important or tangential, or your assignment doesn't call for this degree of rigor, then establishing that Wikipedia's sources are credible might suffice without looking them up.

I wrote more about evaluating sources in this answer, drawing in part from this article from UC Berkeley.

For Wikipedia in particular, you can also check the "talk" page associated with the topic you're looking at. The "talk" pages can sometimes tell you if any content is disputed or of questionable quality. If the "talk" page is empty, though, don't assume that means everything's fine -- it might mean that no experts have looked at the topic yet.

It's impossible to say, globally, "Wikipedia is trustworthy" or "Wikipedia is not trustworthy". Unlike an edited, curated encyclopedia, it contains material at a range of quality levels. I find Wikipedia to be a good starting point in research; sometimes I find everything I need there (including supporting sources), and sometimes I don't. Don't rule it out, but do be prepared to go beyond it.

A student asked on the SE site for writing about how to do online research, and specifically how to evaluate the information returnred by Google. This is the answer I posted:

In doing research, whether online or offline, there are two types of assertions you can encounter: supported and unsupported. (Just like on Stack Exchange!)

An unsupported claim isn't worth very much. Some blog post says "X", but somewhere out there is another blog post saying "not X". This happens at sites that look more credible than blogs, too. And some of them might sound credible, until you realize that the author has a vested interest or the post is 7 years old and things have changed.

This is why Wikipedia, for example, bars original research and demands citations. When you come across a (well-written) Wikipedia page, or some other source like it, you'll see a bunch of citations at the bottom. Those citations explain where they got their information.

Don't just say "there are citations; done!", though. Citations can be misunderstood or misrepresented, particularly in works that aren't carefully reviewed. You have more work ahead of you.

If you need to verify a claim, find its citation and then go look at that source. If it has what you need, great. If not and it has citations, follow those. Iterate until you find what you need or you reach a dead end on all threads.

When evaluating a source, look for these key factors, taken from this quick guide to evaluating a source's credibility from UC Berkeley:

1. Authority - Who is the author? What is their point of view?
2. Purpose - Why was the source created? Who is the intended audience?
3. Publication & format - Where was it published? In what medium?
4. Relevance - How is it relevant to your research? What is its scope?
5. Date of publication - When was it written? Has it been updated?
6. Documentation - Did they cite their sources? Who did they cite?

In this answer I've talked mostly about #6, but everything on that list is important.

Investigating sources is a standard tool of academic researchers, reference librarians, and (good) journalists, among others. If you don't have access to an academic researcher or a journalist to learn the technique from, make friends with the reference librarian at your local library. That person will be able to help you decipher references, hunt down obscure sources, and so on.

You might find these resources collected by Tulsa Community College about evaluating sources helpful. (Many universities have such guides for their students; that's just the first one I found.)