i like parrots

[Linzoy]

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope witha wide range of material.

Polished wordsmith

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an "outstanding example of interspecies communication".

In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.

Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.

Captives' frustrations

This was despite the researchers discounting responses like "What ya doing on the phone?" when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and "Can I give you a hug?" with one of a couple embracing.

Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine, said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots."

Alison Hales, of the World Parrot Trust, told BBC News Online: "N'kisi's amazing vocabulary and sense of humour should make everyone who has a pet parrot consider whether they are meeting its needs.

"They may not be able to ask directly, but parrots are long-lived, and a bit of research now could mean an improved quality of life for years."

I don't know if anyone cares about talking animals, but I do. I even read a book about how to train your dog to talk. It actually might work, the books says dogs only bark because they're imitating human speech. Wild dogs never bark.

What's most interesting about this bird is that it says "flied" instead of "flew." Most people think parrots only imitate human speech, but this proves that the parrot is really thinking before talking. It used it's brain to put together “fly” and "ed," it doesn't just imitate noises it hears.

I read somewhere that parrots won’t learn more than 100 words, but this one knows over 900. Maybe if parrots where raised like people, with school and everything, they could talk to us on our level. That’s just a guess, but it’s obvious there’s a lot we don’t know about animals.

[Shining Celebi]

This is probably just the Einstein of parrots, or something...

[Sturgy]

Wow that is amazing a parrot with a vocabluary higher than some humans.

[willis]

what I'd like to know is how the owner raised its parrot, its very obvious the owner did things different.

[ThugzLife703]

o ****, dat parrot prolly got zapped buh sum aliens or somethin

[Shining Celebi]

Originally Posted by ThugzLife703

o ****, dat parrot prolly got zapped buh sum aliens or somethin

That's right, aliens from outer space develop the technology to cross light-years of space, and they reveal themselves to a parrot, whom they make a genious.

Yes, yes it all make sense.

[Linzoy]

It's really unlikley that this is the einstein of parrots, I think most parrots just aren't educated well enough. I wish I knew how the owner raised it, they must keep the parrot in a store or some place where there would be a lot of people around to listen to.

[Shining Celebi]

Considering how long parrots and similiar birds have been domesticated, and that the BBC article didn't mention any special training methods, I don't see why not.

[willis]

atcually I think its probably a combination of the two, this is obviously a smart bird but lets not forget we can only increase our knowlage through education. This bird is smart but I highly doubt he was just left in a cage in the dark taught a few words to say to people. It could of picked stuff up off the tv but by the same argument any bird could.

[Shining Celebi]

Exactly. No doubt hundreds of birds get left in front of TVs, or live in places where there are many people talking.

[Linzoy]

No one learns how to talk by watching tv. Meeting other real people makes you want to talk, watching tv does nothing. I think it's most likely the owner raised it differently than most parrots are raised, but it could be something obscure no one would remember like the parrot being taken from it's mother a month before most parrots are or something.

[Shining Celebi]

No one learns how to talk by watching tv.

Wrong. It's been proven that people, and therefore by extension parrots, learn a great deal of vocabulary from TV. Common sense, really. =\

[Linzoy]

Really? That's strange. I've heard of kids who never learn how to talk because they're kept indoors all the time, maybe they didn't watch tv.

I remember being a little kid and only watching little kid shows with words I already knew. Whenever I watched anything that wasn't a cartoon or a kids show I wouldn't understand it, the people talked to fast or maybe I just couldn't pay attention.

[Linzoy]

Also I have two parakeets right next to the tv. Parakeets aren't nearly as intelligent as african grey parrots, but they've been known to speak a few words. My birds never say anything. I say hello and other words to them a lot but they don't even try to talk. When I sing they chirp, but they never follow the notes right. I got them when they where too old to be trained how to talk, but I didn't know that when I bought them.

[Kid_Buu]

No offence, but Parrots drive me around the bend, the chirping I find so frustrating. I just cannot find a way to shut them up, they seriously drive me crazy. There cool pets, but I heard they are hard to look after.

[willis]

programs such as sesame street where designed to teach children language, maths and how ot socialise with others, in fact this tv program is arguably the only tv program to ever change the world.

what needs to be developed is a way of teaching parrots as a form of education and not as tricks, this would prove it with the right number of parrots.

you need to encourage them to learn with treats but you need to teach them as if your teaching a small child and work up through education from there. talking to them would be required and i think weening them off the treats would play an important role, complimenting them in theory if you got them to a good enough level would work.

[TrU 0uTlAw]

So, if they want to teach parrots to talk at our level. Why not get a couple of those parrots, teach them how to talk once they are born or something. Start them off early and see what happens. Try it out with however may parrots they want to use and see if they get some that are smarter then the others, what techniques worked, and so on..

[Linzoy]

I wish I could buy a grey parrot. The problem is that they're just like children that never grow up but still live 70 or so years. If you treat an intelligent parrot like a regular bird it will start mutilating itself out of boredom, and I wouldn't have time to take good care of a grey parrot. There probably aren't as many studies on parrots as there are on dogs and other smart animals because if you leave a dog alone for a week it won't rip all it's fur out.

[Deslord]

Wow, that's pretty cool. I'd probably smash a dictionary on it's beak if it corrects my language.